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History of Physics Department at AMU : Rudolf Samuel (1897-1949)

Rudolf Samuel (1897-1949)
In July 1933, Selig Bodetsky, an active Zionist in England, mathematician and a future president of the Hebrew University, received a letter from Rudolf Samuel, professor of experimental physics at the Islamic University of Aligarh* in India requesting a position in the physics department in Jerusalem. Samuel (b.1897) had been an active Zionist in Germany and had studied in Berlin and in Gottingen with James Frank. In 1931 Samuel was appointed to head the physics department at Aligarh, which he developed into one of the best and most modern in India.He regarded this position, however, only as a stepping stone to Palestine; he already had sent his wife Erna and son John to Haifa to grow up and be educated in Palestine.

Brodetsky declined Samuel's request, stating, ``It will not be fair to offer a post to a Jew who already has a good one outside Germany, when there are so many good scientists who desperately need appointments as a result of the state of affairs in Germany.'' Brodetsky also reported his refusal to Ornstein, commenting at the same time on Ornstein's recommendations regarding the appointments of Felix Bloch and Ernst Alexander, an experimentalist from Freiburg. We will discuss these two cases below. Samuel did not despair; as we will see, he tried again for an appointment two years later.

The Rudolf Samuel Affair
Contrary to Placzek, Bloch, and Wigner, Rudolf Samuel (1897–1949) was an experimental physicist, and an ardent Zionist, who wanted to join the Hebrew University at any cost. As noted above, he sent his family to Haifa whilst he was still head of the physics department at the Islamic University at Aligarh in India. In 1933, as we have seen, Brodetsky turned down his request to be appointed to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, as he already had found a position outside Germany.

Samuel renewed his application to the Hebrew University at the end of 1935. In a warm letter of recommendation, Sir C. V. Raman pointed out Samuel's great success in establishing an active and modern department that became ``one of the leading centres for the progress of Physics in India.'' Raman then explained that ``a reactionary change of a regrettable character'' had occurred at the Islamic University whose leadership now will ``no longer [make] room for any non-Muslim teacher, however competent or efficient, on its staff.''

Fraenkel responded to Samuel in February 1936, saying that although Weizmann was positively disposed to his application, the financial problems facing the exact natural sciences (``which get the treatment of a step-child'') left no hope for it. Beyond the minimal plans of maintaining laboratories for the lecturer Sambursky, the assistants Alexander and Wolfson, and the recruitment of a theoretical physicist, there was grave doubt something else could be done.66 Weizmann probably wanted very much to help Samuel, as an active Zionist. Ornstein, however, was entirely negative, writing Weizmann in March 1936 that:
Samuel is second-grade. His work is unimportant, and only impresses somewhat by its volume. He did not do anything important. Born's opinion [Max Born also had sent a letter of recommendation to Weizmann] cannot be taken too seriously. He is a very good theoretician but has no deep understanding of experimental work. I received an opinion on Samuel from [James] Franck. When I answered him what my opinion was he replied that the motive for his letter was compassion [Mitleid]. I am afraid this is also Born's motive. In any case it would be most unjust to appoint Samuel professor in charge of Sambursky and Wolfson. I hope you have been convinced not to act without hearing the opinion of the curatorium.
Samuel, however, did not yield. On March 10, 1936, he responded to Fraenkel's February letter complaining that his previous letters to Weizmann, Brodetzky, Ornstein and Magnes did not receive matter-of-fact responses. From the beginning of his career, he said, he had wanted a position in Jerusalem, no matter how minor, because he and his wife were veteran Zionists: ``We are fed up with living abroad. Our only son goes to school in Haifa. We parted so that he at least could grow up in the country. For 20 years my goal has been to come to Palestine, and work there.''

Four months later, in July, Samuel submitted a detailed program for the development of physics in Jerusalem, wherein he expressed optimism regarding the possibility of raising funds and obtaining apparatus on loan. Einstein, who also had been asked about Samuel's candidacy, told Fraenkel in August that the recommendations of Franck, Born, and Raman should suffice. Concerning Ornstein's highly negative opinion, Einstein stated that ``it is irrelevant, to my mind. Firstly, he does not know Samuel. Secondly, I know him [Ornstein] as an egocentric person who strives for power and influence at any cost, and who tends to defame in order to advance his own men.'' Ornstein in fact again wrote another detailed letter to Fraenkel, arguing against Samuel: ``Nowadays there is no place for three experimenters, and of all – Wolfson . . . is better than Samuel. The physics department is lacking a theoretician.''

Correspondence pertaining to the Samuel affair continued. Weizmann suspected that it was Sambursky who was organizing the opposition to Samuel, and who was negatively influencing Schocken. Fraenkel also wrote to Erna Samuel, who was living in Haifa, and her responses convey a sense of sadness and despair. She writes, for example, of Schocken's ``despairing'' proposal to appoint her husband as a propagandist and fund-raiser for the university. Weizmann, as we saw, strove valiantly to support the nomination of Samuel. In December 1936, at a meeting of the faculty board, Weizmann again tried to advance Samuel's appointment, saying ``it is unhealthy for Sambursky to want to monopolize himself in experimental physics.''

Samuel's disappointment with his treatment by the Hebrew University did not diminish his ambition to realize his dream of Zionism, which he had nurtured since his youth. In a note written to Fraenkel from London, he wrote: ``I have decided for Palestine at any price, even at the risk of abandoning physics. Thus only one member of the family will be hurt, and not all three.'' It seems that in the end Samuel went to the Haifa Technion. His status there is unclear. He published some papers dealing with the chemical bond that were written at the Technion, but were based in part on a series of lectures he had given at the Technological Institute of Illinois in Chicago in 1943. He died in 1949 at the age of 52 in Tel-Aviv.

Issachar Unna, The Genesis of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Physics in Perspective, 2 (2000) 336–380, Birkhauser Verlag, Basel, 2000

Note from Moderator:

*Aligarh Muslim University has been referred as Islamic University at Aligarh in this article. Due to copy right issues this articles has not been edited by moderators.