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Book is in good pre with moderate signs of physical / cosmetic wear including slight bowing to front board, scratches, scuffs, corner / edge wear, and other general wear seen pictured.

Dust jacket is in good pre owned condition with moderate / heavy signs of physical / cosmetic wear including curling, tearing, small staining, fading / discoloration, yellowing, scratches, scuffs, and other general wear seen pictured.

Book has no excessive signs of physical / cosmetic wear other than seen pictured and can be read as normal.

Book was acquired from the estate of Victor F. Weisskopf and was apart of his private collection

Inscription roughly reads “For Victor Weisskopf. Who experienced Karl Kraus in the same lectures, very warm in friendship”

Please be okay with condition, review pictures carefully and confirm this is what you’re looking for before purchase.

Feel free to ask any questions or for more detailed pictures before purchase.

Selling strictly as is - no returns.

“On a higher level the old prejudices were attacked by poets such as Georg Trakl and by political writers such as Vienna's Karl Kraus and Berlin's Kurt Tucholsky, who was later murdered by the Nazis. Kraus was our hero because he had been fighting injustice and dishonesty by the military, the civil authorities, and the press since the old days of Kaiser Franz-Joseph. Kraus died shortly before the Nazis came to Vienna, but he lived long enough to see Hitler come to power in Germany. He asked his friends, "Tell me, why did I actually object to the kaiser?" - The Joy of Insight (1991) by Victor Weisskopf.

“Victor Weisskopf was born in Vienna on September 19, 1908. He studied at the University of Vienna and received a doctorate in physics from the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1931. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dr. Weisskopf served at several European research institutions at a time regarded as seminal in the development of nuclear physics. During this period, he studied with and was an assistant to Nobel Prize winners Neils Bohr (whom he called his "intellectual father"), Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Erwin Schrodinger. In 1937 he went to the United States, where he was to spend much of the rest of his working life, becoming naturalized in 1943. The following year he was invited to join the Manhattan Project which was working to produce the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he was appointed a group leader in the Theoretical Division under Hans Bethe.

In 1945, Weisskopf was among the founders of the Federation of Atomic Sciences (now known as the Federation of American Scientists), formed to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy. In the late 1940s, he was a vocal opponent of the plans of Edward Teller and others to develop the hydrogen bomb. Bethe credited Dr. Weisskopf with dissuading him from joining the project.

In 1946 he joined the staff of MIT, remaining there for 14 years until 1960, when he obtained leave of absence after being appointed one of the directorate of five to assist the director-general of the Centre Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN). The following year he became director-general himself, a post he held during a period in which CERN's aims were greatly expanded.

After leaving CERN to return to MIT in 1965, Weisskopf returned every year to Geneva to lecture summer students. At MIT he became in 1967 head of the department of physics, a post he held until 1973.

In parallel with his work at MIT Weisskopf was chairman of the high-energy physics advisory panel of the Atomic Energy Commission in the US from 1967 to 1975.”

“Weisskopf had a long standing interest in global affairs. Before the war he had met with J. Robert Oppenheimer to share his perspective on Soviet tyranny. This meeting was central to Oppenheimer’s eventual decision to pull away from Communist-backed activities.

In 1943, Oppenheimer recruited Weisskopf to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Weisskopf served as the Deputy Division Leader of the Theoretical Division, working under Hans Bethe. Much of his research at Los Alamos dealt with the potential effects of the bomb.

Weisskopf’s role at Los Alamos brought him to the Trinity site as well. He arrived there several weeks before the test was conducted in order to prepare and assemble measurement equipment. He remained at the Alamogordo, NM site through the duration of the test. Just 36 hours after the bomb was detonated, he, along with Bethe and Enrico Fermi, became the first non-military personnel to survey the site.

In addition to his scientific achievements, Weisskopf was also a civic leader at Los Alamos. He served multiple terms on the Los Alamos town council, including one term as the council chairman, making him the town’s de facto mayor. At the same time, he was an advocate for the project’s lower level workers, negotiating with military officials in order to win them better pay and accommodations.

Ever opposed to the Nazi regime, Weisskopf even devised a plan to kidnap his former colleague Werner Heisenberg from a Swiss lecture series he was attending in order to stymie the German atomic bomb program. He shared this plan with Oppenheimer, who felt lukewarm about it at best. General Leslie Groves was more forceful in vetoing it.”