The Deutsches Museum in Munich was founded in 1903 by the engineer Oskar von Miller. Its full name is Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik, the German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology. Its main building opened on 7 May 1925. At its center is the Ehrensaal, the Hall of Honor, which the museum calls Tempel der Technik und Naturwissenschaft, the temple of technology and science. It was meant to Ehrfurcht wecken vor den herausragenden Schöpfern der „Meisterwerke“, to awaken awe before the outstanding creators of the masterpieces. It followed the 19th-century idea that Männer machen Geschichte, men make history. The nuclear physicist Lise Meitner is the only woman honored there so far. The museum now writes that it views such a strongly person-centered portrayal of technology and history critically.
science
A Purer Form of a Known Substance
According to his laboratory journal, the Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann produced acetylsalicylic acid on 10 August 1897, for the first time largely free of by-products. The substance itself was already known. Earlier chemists, among them Karl Kraut, had described ways to make it. After pharmaceutical testing it was registered under the brand name Aspirin. The trademark dates from 1 February 1899. Later, Hoffmann’s colleague Arthur Eichengrün claimed the real credit. German Wikipedia notes that the company documents do not support his account. Only Hoffmann is named as the inventor in the American patent.
Weighing Technology
The TechnikRadar is a survey by acatech, the German Academy of Science and Engineering. The first edition, made with the Körber Foundation, appeared in 2018. In it, 35.1 percent of respondents agreed that technology creates more problems in the long run than it solves. 40.0 percent gave an ambivalent answer, and 24.6 percent disagreed. The report concluded: Trotz dieser Sorge lehnen die Deutschen Technik grundsätzlich nicht ab. (Despite this concern, Germans do not reject technology in principle.) They take a differentiated view and see that the risks are balanced by opportunities. The 2025 edition, based on a different survey, found that Germans judge each technology by its use. 70 percent called renewable energy useful and 12 percent risky. For genetically modified crops the figures were 23 percent useful and 57 percent risky.
Goethe Against Newton
Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, Theory of Colors, appeared on 16 May 1810. One part of it is a polemic against Newton’s theory of color. Between 1810 and 1832 many natural scientists and mathematicians commented on the work. Almost half of them opposed Goethe. Among the statements from natural science, a third supported him. Hermann von Helmholtz admired Goethe’s scientific work, but he called its main thesis simply wrong. Goethe himself valued his research on color more than all his literary work. He told Johann Peter Eckermann: Auf alles, was ich als Poet geleistet habe, bilde ich mir gar nichts ein. (I think nothing of all that I have achieved as a poet.) What made him proud, he said, was that he was the only one in his century who knew the truth in the difficult science of color.
He Does Not Play Dice
On 4 December 1926 Albert Einstein wrote to Max Born about the new quantum mechanics. He began with respect: Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtunggebietend. (Quantum mechanics commands great respect.) Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das noch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. (But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing.) The theory delivered a lot, he wrote, but it hardly brought us closer to the secret of the Old One. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt. (In any case I am convinced that He does not play dice.) Until his death in 1955 Einstein tried in vain to find a deterministic theory behind it. Experiments later disproved his conclusions. But the observations behind his objections proved correct and fundamental. German Wikipedia says he was the first to put his finger in an open wound.
The Professor Who Drank the Cholera
The Munich hygienist Max von Pettenkofer did not accept that Robert Koch’s cholera bacterium alone caused the disease. In his view, the soil and the groundwater mattered most. On 7 October 1892 he drank a culture of the bacteria himself, to show that the bacteria alone were not enough to cause the disease. He suffered only mild diarrhea. Some of his students repeated the experiment and fell ill only mildly or not at all. Koch’s bacteriology prevailed all the same. Because Pettenkofer would not accept it, he became more and more isolated in science.
A Machine to Check a Calculation
Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald is a fusion experiment of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Its design rests on an optimization concept calculated in advance. The largely worked-out application for EU support was submitted in August 1990. Construction of the new institute building began in 1997. The machine produced its first plasma on 10 December 2015. Because of the long construction phase, the total cost of the Greifswald site was more than double the original estimate. One experimental phase in 2018 had a clearly stated aim: die Richtigkeit der berechneten Optimierung experimentell zu überprüfen, to check by experiment that the calculated optimization was correct.
Research That May Fail
The German Research Foundation funds Reinhart Koselleck-Projekte for besonders innovative und im positiven Sinne risikobehaftete Forschung, particularly innovative research that carries risk in a positive sense. A project receives between 500,000 and 1.25 million euros for five years. Only researchers with an outstanding academic record may apply.
The Workshop Owner and the Young Physicist
Carl Zeiss trained for four years as an apprentice mechanic. In his time, microscopes were made by Pröbeln, by trial and error. Zeiss wanted to build microscope optics from calculations instead. A first collaboration with a scientist produced no result. On 3 July 1866 the 50-year-old Zeiss began to work with Ernst Abbe, a 26-year-old lecturer in mathematical physics at the University of Jena. Abbe’s task was to put the workshop’s microscope production on a secure scientific foundation. The first microscope built from his calculations performed worse than the old ones. The work was finally completed in 1872. After that, no competing product surpassed the quality of their microscopes.
The Country Doctor in Breslau
Robert Koch was the district medical officer in Wollstein, a small town in the Prussian province of Posen. He also ran a private practice as a country doctor. In 1873 he set up a private laboratory in part of his consulting room. There he studied bacteria, above all the anthrax bacillus. He sent the first version of his article on anthrax to the botanist Ferdinand Cohn in Breslau. Cohn reacted with enthusiasm and invited Koch to present his work in Breslau over several days. A student named Paul Ehrlich met Koch for the first time on this occasion. The article was published in 1876. Today Koch is regarded as a founder of modern bacteriology.