![]() ![]() He grew extremely resentful of the credit accorded to Wilhelm Roentgen, who received the first Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the X-ray, despite the fact that Roentgen was German and a non-Jew. Lenard directed his invective at other scientists. Ironically, the National Socialists’ disdain for “Jewish physics” was one of the main reasons they did not develop nuclear weapons. Unlike many German scientists who regarded Adolf Hitler with disdain, Lenard was one of his most fervent supporters, and became the regime’s number one physics authority. Lenard’s conviction that science, “like everything else man produces,” was somehow grounded in bloodlines led him to become one of the early adherents of National Socialism. Later, he abandoned all pretense of patience and tolerance, labeling Lenard “a really twisted fellow” who must continue “to do business with the monster until he bites the dust.” “When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second, but when you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. Of Einstein himself, whose ideas had been accepted by many of the most prominent physicists around the world, Lenard opined, “Just because a goat is born in a stable does not make him a noble thoroughbred.”Įinstein initially attempted to respond to Lenard’s attacks on his theory of relativity with humor: He compared theoretical physicists to Cubist painters, who in his view were “unable to paint decently.” He lamented the fact that a “Jewish spirit” had come to rule over physics. Lenard’s attacks on Einstein became increasingly vitriolic. He also launched a malicious attack on Einstein, making little attempt to conceal his antipathy toward Jews. The time had come, he argued, to restore experimentalism to its proper place. Lenard argued that Einstein’s hyper-theoretical and hyper-mathematical approach to physics was exerting a pernicious influence in the field. In 1920, just a year before Einstein won the Nobel Prize, the debate between Lenard and Einstein erupted into a duel of words at a major German research conference. Lenard also became more and more mired in anti-Semitism, accusing the “Jewish press” of, among other things, promoting Einstein’s dangerous work on relativity. ![]() ![]() He became increasingly convinced of the existence of a distinctively German physics that needed to be defended against the plagiarized or frankly fabricated work emanating from other countries. ![]() Lenard, meanwhile, was soon swept along in a wave of German nationalism that accompanied World War I. I am very sorry that you must waste your time with such stupidities. His theories on the ether seem to me almost infantile, and some of his investigations border on the ludicrous. In a letter to a friend a few years later, Einstein expressed a quite different view of Lenard, who was then regarded by many as the most celebrated physicist in Germany: When Einstein published his quantum theory explaining the photoelectric effect, Lenard wrote to him, “Nothing can make me happier than a thinker of great depth and scope deriving some pleasure from my work.” Einstein, in turn, referred to Lenard as “a great master and genius.”īut as detailed in a recent book, The Man Who Stalked Einstein, their relationship soon deteriorated. Their correspondence suggests that each held the other in high admiration. Initially, the relationship between Lenard and Einstein seems to have been cordial. Ferdinand Schmutzer via Wikimedia Commons ![]()
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