About the Author

J. L. Heilbron, formerly Professor of History and the Vice Chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford. He was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society in 1993 for his contributions to the field.

Reviews

An important book to which all students of science as a human institution should be referred… This story of a fruitful but ultimately tragic life is extremely well told and needs to be more widely known.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*

Heilbron gives a very readable, and very balanced, account of the successes and disasters of this great physicist, without attempting to pass judgment. But the character of the man comes clearly through the narrative.
*New York Review of Books*

A fascinating account of the life of one of the founders of modern physics. [Heilbron] takes every opportunity to draw parallels between the evolution of science and the social upheavals which accompanied the process.
*New Scientist*

The Dilemmas of an Upright Man is a reissue of the life of Max Planck… Hollywood would title it Triumph and Tragedy. Planck’s quantum theory transformed physics, but his career period was rocked by two world wars. He stayed in Nazi Germany throughout… Although he could have escaped, he wouldn’t leave. Some contemporaries found his obduracy hard to understand.
*Science News*