Short description:

Scientific Research in World War II seeks to explore how scientists managed to cope with the particular circumstances created by the war.  The book focuses on both war-waging countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and the United States, and those under occupation, such as the Netherlands and France.

Long description:

This book seeks to explore how scientists across a number of countries managed to cope with the challenging circumstances created by World War II.

No scientist remained unaffected by the outbreak of WWII. As the book shows, there were basically two opposite ways in which the war encroached on the life of a scientific researcher. In some cases, the outbreak of the war led to engagement in research in support of a war-waging country; in the other extreme, it resulted in their marginalisation. The book, starting with the most marginalised scientist and ending with those fully engaged in the war-effort, covers the whole spectrum of enormously varying scientific fates. Distinctive features of the volume include:

• a focus on the experiences of ?ordinary? scientists, rather than on figureheads like Oppenheimer or Otto Hahn








• contributions from a range of renowned academics including Mark Walker, an authority in the field of science in World War II








• a detailed study of the Netherlands during the German Occupation

This richly illustrated volume will be of major interest to researchers of the history of science, World War II, and Modern History.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Ordinary Scientists in Extraordinary Circumstances  Chapter 1. The Mobilisation of Science and Science-Based Technology during the Second World War: A Comparative History  Chapter 2. To Work or Not to Work in War Research?: The Case of the Italian Physicist G.P.S. Occhialini during WWII  Chapter 3. Scientific Research in the Second World War: The Case for Bacinol, Dutch Penicillin  Chapter 4.  Preventing Theft: The Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory in Wartime  Chapter 5. Electron Microscopy in Second World War Delft  Chapter 6. "Splendid Isolation"?: Aviation Medicine in World War II  Chapter 7. National Socialism, Human Genetics and Eugenics in the Netherlands 1940-1945  Chapter 8. The Birth of a Modern Instrument and Its Development during World War II: Electron Microscopy in Germany from the 1930s to 1945  Chapter 9. Aerodynamic Research at the Nationaal Luchtvaartlaboratorium (NLL) in Amsterdam under German Occupation during World War II  Chapter 10. Masa Takeuchi and His Involvement in the Japanese Nuclear Weapons Research Programme  Chapter 11. The Cyclotron and the War: Construction of the 60-inch Cyclotron in Japan  Chapter 12. Forging a New Discipline: Reflections on the Wartime Infrastructure for Research and Development in Feedback Control in the US, UK, Germany and USSR  Chapter 13. British cryptanalysis: the breaking of 'Fish' traffic