Johannes Stark's life can be divided into two fairly distinct and contrasting halves. During the earlier period, he demonstrated unusual skills as an experimentalist and won acclaim as a brilliant physicist, holding posts at universities throughout Germany. Founder and editor of the prestigious Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik (Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics ), he is credited with discovering the Doppler effect in canal rays, and the splitting of the spectral lines of hydrogen by means of an external electrical field, a phenomenon now known as the Stark effect. For these discoveries, Stark received the 1919 Nobel Prize in physics. After 1913, however, Stark began to withdraw from the scientific community and to ally himself with Adolf Hitler's program of National Socialism. Along with Philipp von Lenard , Stark called for a "purification" of German science, an adoption of a non-Jewish "Aryan science." He failed to receive the recognition he...