Abstract
THE physical societies of the Western German Zone have issued a memorandum urging political authoritiest and other not to grudge financial help to place research. In spite of the well-known fact ‘the physics of to-day is the technology of to-morrow, heavy restrictions have been introduced since the end of the War, and particularly since the currency reform, in the budgets of all university laboratories. Staff has been dismissed and vacant chairs have not been filled. Although Germany has become poor and should be thrifty, it can only live on its output and will soon be considerably poorer still, unless more means than ever before (proportionally) are spent on the re-equipment of its institutes and the training of young scientific workers. The memorandum points out that the number of students in the Western Zone universities has doubled; but science, cut off from the world for many years, has fallen behind and is unable to catch up with other countries for lack of apparatus and materials, so that men of science prefer to work abroad. Modern physics, even if carried on in the least ambitious style, requires very expensive equipment, and the great complication of the work demands more technical as well as clerical staff. “No industrial laboratory works as uneconomic-ally as do the university laboratories, where owing to lack of staff the professors and scientific assistants must do almost all the work themselves.’ Further, if, as is now the case, one scientific assistant must suffice for a hundred students, both the work of the assistant and the training of the students suffer. The Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft can only supply a small portion of the needed funds, and the universities should have funds of their own, if work is to be undertaken independently of the approval of non-scientific bodies. At present, every trifle must be approved by a Government department and decisions are in consequence greatly delayed.
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Physics Research in Western Germany. Nature 164, 176 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164176b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164176b0