Reality-Based Engineering: Nobel Laureate Chemist Postumously Stripped Of Honor

Friday, March 03, 2006

Apparently, Peter Debye was a Nazi sympathizer while director of the Max Plank Institute in Berlin...

At Sat May 06, 07:20:00 AM EDT, Anonymous said...: Rispen in his book published nothing new and his accusations are totally unfounded. Debye was neither a Nazi-sympathizer (he despised them) nor an anti-semite (he hired them, took them as students, and worked with them.) He carefully planned his escape from Berlin in Jan 1939; had his wife follow later that year. Quickly worked for Bell LAbs on the US war effort improving radar systems. Applied for US citizenship in 1941. The story of the letter to the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft has a long background which had previously been discussed in print many years ago and again in Dec 2004 Physics Today. Rispens is a media consultant, by profession, who needed to create a non-existent controversy to sell his book. Ample biographies exist by people who knew Debye describing him accurately.