Serving the Reich

Ball’s book shows what can happen to morality when cleverness and discovery are valued above all else – Philip Maughan * New Statesman *
Ball does an outstanding service by reminding us how powerful and sometimes confusing the pressures were… Packed with dramatic, moving and even comical moments – Robert P Crease * Nature *
A fascinating account of the moral dilemmas faced by German physicists working within Nazism. Impeccably researched – Ian Thomson * Tablet *
An engrossing and disturbing book – Andrew Robinson * History Today *
[A] fine book – Christopher Coker * Times Literary Supplement *
The story is intriguing for it reveals the lack of insight of many of the world’s greatest physicists – Robin McKie * Observer *
A new book from Philip Ball is always an eagerly anticipated event, but this one exceeds expectations – John Gribbin * Literary Review *
Ball examines sensitively the careers of three eminent physicists who continued to work in Nazi Germany, emphasising the very different ways in which each dealt (or failed to deal) with the moral dilemmas of working in an increasingly oppressive state – Sir Michael Berry * Times Higher Education *
Asks important questions, not just about 20th-century German science but about the nature of science and the response of scientists to the political world we perforce inhabit. All scientists should read and ponder its contents – Richard Joyner * Times Higher Education *
Ball’s judgements are well reasoned, nuanced and, in my view, fair – Graham Farmelo * Guardian *

Philip Ball writes regularly in the scientific and popular media. He worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences at Nature.

His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and include:

• Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books)
• The Music Instinct
• Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
• Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under Hitler
• Invisible: The history of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics

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