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【科技史上的今天——2012.01.11】一束光芒打破黑暗

译者 猪的米

1911: The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science, forerunner of the Max Planck Society and its institutes, is founded in Berlin.

1911年1月11日，德国马普学会及其所属研究机构的前身，威廉·凯撒科学进步学会在柏林成立。

Established to promote the sciences, even as Germany stood at the threshold of its stormiest political epoch, the society, which served as an umbrella organization for a variety of scientific disciplines and their institutes, nevertheless achieved a renown unsurpassed by anyone anywhere.

尽管那时德国政治前途正处在暴风雨前的间隙，这个学会的成立意在促进科学发展，并为许多科学学科及其机构提供庇护，它取得的名声无人能及。

Despite being named for the German monarch, the society was independent of the government. It did, however, receive money from the state, as well as from other sources both domestic and foreign — including the Rockefeller Foundation.

尽管学会名字取自德国皇帝，但它完全独立于政府。虽然如此，它接受许多州的捐款，还有来自国内国外的多种渠道的钱款——包括洛克菲勒基金会。

The society attracted the brightest scientific minds in the German-speaking world, which happened to be the world dominating science at the time. Among those associated with the society were Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber, Walther Bothe and another eminent physicist, Max Planck.

这个学会笼络了德语世界里最具头脑的科学人才，而他们在当时也独霸着世界科学界。这些大牛中包括阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦、弗里茨·哈伯、瓦尔特·波特和另一位物理大师，麦克斯·普朗克。

It survived, and thrived, despite Germany’s defeat in World War I, the societal upheaval that followed and the worldwide depression that hit Germany especially hard.

尽管德国在一战中战败，之后社会也发生了剧变，再后来的经济大萧条对德国来说更是雪上加霜，但这个学会得以幸存，并发展壮大。

It also survived the Third Reich, barely. The coming of Hitler deprived the society of some of its finest minds with the cashiering of its Jewish members. Attempts to keep the Nazis at bay were fruitless (Planck, who remained in Germany out of loyalty to his country, personally appealed to Hitler on a colleague’s behalf at one point), and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was an Aryan institution after 1936.

甚至是在希特勒统治下的第三帝国，学会仍能苟延喘息。但希特勒的上台使得学会损失了几位最具头脑的大师，只因为他们是犹太人。试图牵制纳粹党的举动也都以失败告终（出于对祖国的忠诚，普朗克仍留在德国，并曾以同僚的身份像希特勒请愿），以至于到1936年后，整个学会完全成了一个雅利安人组织。

Following World War II, the Americans were in favor of dissolving the organization altogether, and the occupying authorities closed those institutes that were in their zone of occupation. But the British kept things going in their zone, and very shortly the society was operating again in all three western zones. In 1948 it was renamed the Max Planck Institute, after the theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner who had been the society’s president from 1930 to 1937.

在二战之后，美国人倾向于把这个组织整个搬过来，而占领当局则关闭了管辖范围内所有的机构。但英国人保持了他们辖区内机构的正常运行，因而在很短时间内，这个学会又在所有的三个西方辖区内重新开始运行。1948年，学会重新更名为麦克斯·普朗克研究所，取名自前身1930年到1937年间的主席、理论物理学家兼诺贝尔奖得主，麦克斯·普朗克。

(Source: Various)

来源：众多

This article first appeared on Wired.com Jan. 11, 2008.

这篇文章最早于2008年1月11日出现在Wired.com上。