Passage from Book for Lesson One

“In 1920 Stark received the 1919 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the Stark effect—the splitting of spectral lines in an electric field—and moved on to the University Würzburg in his native Bavaria. He now became more active in the politics of the physics community. Berlin physicists, who tended to be more liberal, cosmopolitan, and theoretical, dominated the German Physical Society and had alienated more conservative physicists from other parts of Germany. In April 1920 Stark began soliciting members for his alternative German Professional Community of University Physicists, an organization Stark intended to dominate physics and control the distribution of research funds.

But Stark’s efforts were thwarted. The Physical Society mollified most conservative scientists by

electing as president, Wilhelm Wien, one of their number who was much easier to deal with than Stark. The two main funding organizations, the private Helmholtz Foundation and the state-run Emergency Foundation for German Science (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft, henceforth NG), also preserved their independence by lining up influential scientists and patrons.6 When Stark realized that his voice would be only one among many setting science policy, he withdrew. Stark’s efforts in 1920 were a preview of the action he would take with political backing at the beginning of the Third Reich.”

Walker, Mark. "The Rise and Fall of an "Aryan" Physicist." Nazi science: Myth, truth, and the German atomic bomb. New York: Plenum P, 1995. 7.