Falk Müller – författare

As a powerful research technology, electron microscopy has shaped various natural and technical sciences. With its help, previously invisible pathogens such as viruses or bacteriophages became visible. After first successes in medical and biological research, it became a crucial research tool in the materials sciences, in chemistry, and solid state physics. The book focuses on the emergence and genesis of electron microscopy in Germany – from its beginnings in the early 1930s to the 1960s. Large corporations such as Siemens and AEG vied for supremacy in the development and sale of this innovative technology. In its early development, the success story of the electron microscope was characterized by strategic calculations, propaganda work, and tough patent negotiations, by conflicts among the protagonists over an appropriate place in future memory and by the entanglements with officials and organizations of the National Socialist State. The scientific and technical contributions of the electrical engineer and 1986 Nobel Prize winner in physics, Ernst Ruska, serve as a biographical thread.

As a powerful research technology, electron microscopy has shaped various natural and technical sciences. With its help, previously invisible pathogens such as viruses or bacteriophages became visible. After first successes in medical and biological research, it became a crucial research tool in the materials sciences, in chemistry, and solid state physics. The book focuses on the emergence and genesis of electron microscopy in Germany – from its beginnings in the early 1930s to the 1960s. Large corporations such as Siemens and AEG vied for supremacy in the development and sale of this innovative technology. In its early development, the success story of the electron microscope was characterized by strategic calculations, propaganda work, and tough patent negotiations, by conflicts among the protagonists over an appropriate place in future memory and by the entanglements with officials and organizations of the National Socialist State. The scientific and technical contributions of the electrical engineer and 1986 Nobel Prize winner in physics, Ernst Ruska, serve as a biographical thread.

Many of us view the world of science as a firm bastion of knowledge, with each new discovery and further illumination adding to an unshakable foundation of natural truths. Weak Knowledge aims to rattle our faith, not in core certainties of scientific findings but in their strength as accessible resources. The authors show how, throughout history, many bodies of research have become precarious due to a host of factors. These factors have included cultural or social disinterest, feeble empirical evidence or theoretical justifications, and a lack of practical applications in a given field’s findings. This book brings together cases from a range of historical periods and disciplines, ranging from personal medicine to climatology, to illuminate the specific forms, functions, and dynamics of so-called “weak” bodies of knowledge.

Aktuell mehr denn je: Falk Müllers Studie zu Patenten, Prioritäten und Entwicklungenin der Elektronenmikroskopie.Die Elektronenmikroskopie hat als wirkmächtige Forschungstechnologie die Natur- und Technikwissenschaften geprägt. Mit ihrer Hilfe ließen sich etwa bislang unsichtbare Krankheitserreger wie Viren sichtbar machen. Ihre Entwicklung fand unter dem Einfluss unterschiedlicher kultureller, ökonomischer, rechtlicher, wissenschaftlicher und technischer Randbedingungen, verschiedener industrieller Wertschöpfungsstrategien und politischer Systeme statt. Elektrotechnikkonzerne wie AEG und Siemens propagierten die Instrumente als Symbole nicht allein des wissenschaftlichen und technischen, sondern auch des kulturellen Fortschritts. Das führte zu vielfältigen Kooperationen, dem Aufbau neuer Institutionen und Organisationen, aber auch zu Konflikten zwischen den Mitarbeitern konkurrierender Forschungsabteilungen - um Patente, Prioritäten und einen angemessenen Platz in der zukünftigen Erinnerung. Im Zentrum des Buches steht die Entstehung und Genese der Elektronenmikroskopie in Deutschland - von den Anfängen in den frühen 1930er-Jahren bis in die 1960er-Jahre. Als biografischer Roter Faden dienen dabei die Beiträge des Elektroingenieurs und Physik-Nobelpreisträgers von 1986, Ernst Ruska.