Question 32: There was a time when certain physical experiments were suddenly regarded as politically undesired. How political can physics be in your opinion?

Andreas Bauch, PTB Working Group "Unit of time": A young physicist once visited me. I had invited him to write a doctoral thesis here. He declined, saying that atomic clocks are needed for warfare – which without any doubt is true. The Global Positioning System, for example, would not work without atomic clocks. I can, however, live and work with this knowledge.
Other fields of physics which influence politics are energy production, energy storage, supervision of disarmament measures – not to mention nuclear physics.

Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976): “Otto Hahn and all of us have had a part in the development of the modern natural sciences. This development is a process of life in favour of which mankind, or at least the Europeans, have decided many years ago – or, to formulate it more carefully: in which mankind got involved. We know from experience that this process may lead to Good or Evil. But we were convinced – and this was the belief in progress of the 19th century – that with increasing knowledge, the Good would prevail and that the possible negative consequences might be controlled. Before Hahn’s discovery of nuclear fission, neither Hahn nor any other person could seriously think of the possibility of atomic bombs, as at that time physics did not show any road in that direction. No one can be made guilty of having participated in this process of scientific development.”

Uwe Keyser, former PTB Department "Focal Points of Experimental Research": Scientific knowledge as such not at all - but its translation into practice.

Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962): “The progress of physical science which has made it possible to release immense amounts of energy by nuclear fission, initiates a real revolution in the field of the resources available to mankind, which represents an extremely serious challenge to civilization. [...] The terrible destructive powers now available to the human race will obviously become a deadly threat to civilization, unless we in time succeed in reaching a general agreement on appropriate measures to prevent any irresponsible use of the new energy sources.”
Unfortunately, Bohr’s appeal to Churchill and Roosevelt did not prevent the dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Ernst O. Göbel, President of the PTB: Physics is unpolitical, but extremely important to politics

Albert Einstein (1897 - 1955): “If I had known that the Germans wouldn’t succeed in making an atomic bomb, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help them.” (And not made an appeal to the American President Roosevelt to force development of the atomic bomb.)

Annette Paul, PTB Working Group "Environmental radioactivity": Physics is not political, but it may be abused for politics. That is always bad but probably unavoidable.

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934): Marie Curie suffered from the rule of tsarist Russia over her homeland Poland. In 1898, the Curies wrote to the Academy:
“We think that the substance we separated from the pitchblende contains an unknown element whose analytical properties resemble those of bismuth. If the existence of this new element is confirmed, we propose naming it p o l o n i u m after the homeland of one of us.”
During World War I, Marie Curie personally made X-ray apparatuses available to French military hospitals, developed mobile X-ray stations and visited the country’s military hospitals in a car converted into an X-ray station. “The history of radiology during the war is a striking proof of the unforeseen expansion the practical application of purely scientific discoveries may undergo under certain conditions. Until the war, X-rays had been practically used only to a very limited extent. Only the great disaster which came over mankind and claimed innumerable victims aroused as countereffect the burning desire to apply all conceivable means to preserve endangered human lives and to prevent infirmity.

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 - 1894): Helmholtz, who was among the founders of an institute for “scientific and precision-mechanical studies” which was later called the “Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt,” was also called an “Imperial Chancellor” of natural sciences.”

Reinhard Scherm, former PTB Department "Fundamentals of Physics and Metrology": Over and over again