A controversy about the alleged Nazi sympathies of Dutch chemistry Nobel laureate Peter Debye has escalated. Utrecht University last week halted publication of a pro-Debye book by an employee and ordered staff not to discuss the issue with the press. The move follows a university decision last February to strip Debye's name from its institute for nanomaterials.
A science historian, meanwhile, has spoken out in Debye's defense, as has another Dutch Nobel laureate, Martinus Veltman. Cornell University, where Debye was a professor from 1940 until his death in 1966, has concluded from its own 3-month investigation that there's no reason to distance itself from him, as has the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The flap erupted after the publication of a harsh view of Debye–a physical chemist who led the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin from 1935 to 1939–in Einstein in Nederland: Een intellectuele biografie by Berlin-based journalist and science historian Sybe Rispens. One chapter, excerpted in a weekly magazine, documented that Debye, as president of the German Physical Society (DPG), asked Jewish members to resign in a 1938 letter signed “Heil Hitler!” It also claimed that Debye stayed in touch with German authorities while at Cornell, even offering to return to Berlin in June 1941.
In a brief statement issued on 16 February, Utrecht University's board said it would rename the Debye Institute, and Maastricht University said it would no longer award the Peter Debye Prize (Science, 3 March, p. 1239). Gijs van Ginkel, managing director of the “former Debye Institute,” as it now calls itself, responded by writing a book containing an analysis of historical documents, his view of the affair, and a sharp attack on Rispens.
But the university has halted its publication. Van Ginkel referred questions to university spokesperson Ludo Koks, who denies that academic freedom is at stake; Koks says Van Ginkel had broken an agreement not to include personal comments in the publication. Koks confirms that institute staffers have been ordered not to talk to the press to “streamline communications.”
Mark Walker, a historian at Union College in Schenectady, New York, who studies science and technology in the Nazi era, says that although Debye “didn't show civic courage, … all the evidence is that he was not a Nazi sympathizer.” For example, the DPG purged its Jewish members much later than most other scientific societies did, and without any enthusiasm whatsoever, he says. Signing official letters with “Heil Hitler!” was nothing unusual, even among those openly opposed to the regime. That Debye tried to keep communication channels to Germany open while at Cornell is also “absolutely reasonable,” Walker says, because his daughter still lived there.
Walker recently gave a lecture about Debye at Cornell, where the affair “was something we just couldn't ignore,” says Héctor Abruña, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “Debye has had such a huge influence here.” In a 1000-word letter submitted for publication to Chemical and Engineering News, Abruña says a review shows that removing Debye's name from a professorship and a lecture series would be “unwarranted.” Banning books is “not what universities should be about,” Abruña adds.
ACS sees “no compelling reason to do anything” about its Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry either, says Gordon McCarty, chair of ACS's Committee on Grants and Awards; DuPont, the awards sponsor, is “quite comfortable” with that stance, he adds.
Rispens says he opposes silencing different views on Debye and would welcome a study that went beyond his own focus on Albert Einstein's circle. But the affair has cost Rispens the support of one enthusiastic fan: Veltman, who, in a foreword to Rispens's book, praised it as “a nugget of gold.” In a 5 May open letter to Debye Institute staff, Veltman says he took Rispens's assertions “at face value” at the time but now realizes “they should be assigned to the realm of fables.” The foreword will not appear in new editions or translations of the book, Veltman continued; the two universities “should admit their error, revoke their decision, and forget the matter,” he says.