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Hans Bethe - Teaching at Tübingen and the rise of Nazism (37/158)

4,295 views · Published 27 June 2017 · 2:11 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of Hans Bethe’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgLyzTEmJk&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyUDSroBQVEcbnNud7I9xom

German-born theoretical physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) was one of the first scientists to join the Manhattan Project, later strongly advocating nuclear disarmament. In 1967, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. [Listener: Sam Schweber; date recorded: 1996]

TRANSCRIPT: After that I go back to Germany and this time I got an actual job, namely to be acting assistant professor, I think is the best translation, in Tübingen to teach theoretical physics. And this started out very nice. The professor, Geiger, was very nice to me and showed me all the experiments he was doing and I got immediately two graduate students and I gave my lectures which were attended not only by the graduate students, but also by some faculty. There was one very nice young man, assistant to Geiger, Hochse [Sexl] who later on became well-known in connection with the Mayer-Süss, the shell model of the nucleus, and who, as far as I believe, never became a real Nazi. Well, on the other hand this was the winter of '32 to '33 and Nazis were very strong and the student population of Tübingen was very Nazi. There were torch parades and all sorts of things, and there were a number of students who came with a swastika to... to my lectures. It certainly didn't look very good.

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