Arnold Berliner

Arnold Berliner, German Physicist, (Gut Mittelneuland bei Neisse, 26 December 1862 - Berlin, 22 March 1942, committing suicide), graduated in Physics at the University of Breslau in 1886. He worked in the Research and Development Laboratories of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG).

He was good friend of immunologist Paul Ehrlich, and chemist Richard Willstätter.

Around the middle of 1912 he proposed to the Editors firm Springer Verlag , Berlin, and was accepted, as a Director of the then new Scientific Magazine Naturwissenschaften, first published in January 1913, inspired in the older and prestigious British Science Journal Nature, first published in November 1869.

Berliner went in 1912 to work for Springer Verlag as the Editor of the new Scientific Magazine Naturwissenschaften.

Arnold Berliner was dismissed from the Journal he had founded 22 years earlier, in 1913, on 13 August 1935, because of the racial policies on "non-Aryans" implemented by the Nazi governments.

Such administrative decision was heralded by the British Science magazine: (See Nature 136, 506-506 (28 September 1935)). British editors said squarely then and there:

We much regret to learn that on August 13 Dr. Arnold Berliner was removed from the editorship of Die Naturwissenschaften, obviously in consequence of non-Aryan policy. This well-known scientific weekly, which in its aims and features has much in common with NATURE, was founded twenty-three years ago by Dr. Berliner, who has been the editor ever since and has devoted his whole activities to the journal, which has a high standard and under his guidance has become the recognised organ for expounding to German scientific readers subjects of interest and importance.

Fritz Haber, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Max Planck and Max von Laue would write, with others, with respect and objective friendliness on Arnold Berliner 70th birth date while still heading Naturwissenschaften in 1933, (See references).

Arnold Berliner committed suicide the day before an evacuation order (meaning deportation to an extermination camp) became effective.

Asteroid 1018 Arnolda, discovered as 1924 QM on March 3, 1924, in Heidelberg Observatory by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth is named in his honor.

References

• Arnold Berliner zur Feier seines 70.Geburtstages. M.Portrait. Berlin (1932). 4to. (Die Naturwissenschaften.Bd.20/51, Beitr.v.Albert.Einstein, M.von.Laue, Lise Meitner, Max .Born, James Frank und alter).

• Abraham Pais, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1918 - Copenhagen, Denmark, 2000). Dutch-American Jewish Nuclear Physicist, "Subtle is the Lord—": The science and the life of Albert Einstein, (Oxford University Press, 1982), ISBN 0-19-520438-7. ISBN 0-19-853907-X. ISBN 0-19-851971-0 Category: Philosophy , ISBN 978-0-19-851971-3 , and its sequel, Einstein Lived Here (Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1994), ISBN 978-0-19-853994-0. Albert Einstein, (1879–1955) was very close, intellectually speaking, to Arnold Berliner.

• A brief Obituary notice was published in Nature 150, 284-284 (5 September 1942).

• Fritz Stern, Einstein's German World, Princeton University Press, (1999).