Arnold Berliner


Arnold Berliner was a German physicist.

Biography

Berliner graduated in physics from the University of Breslau in 1886. He worked in the research and development laboratories of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft.
Around the middle of 1912 he was appointed by the publishing firm Springer Verlag, Berlin as editor of the new scientific magazine Naturwissenschaften, inspired by the prestigious British scientific journal Nature, first published in November 1869. Naturwissenschaften began publication in January 1913. He became a good friend of immunologist Paul Ehrlich and chemist Richard Willstätter.

Nazi Germany and suicide

Arnold Berliner was dismissed on 13 August 1935, from the journal he had founded 22 years earlier because of the racial policies on "non-Aryans" implemented by the Nazi government. The decision was reported in Nature, which editorialized:
Arnold Berliner committed suicide the day before an evacuation order became effective.

Honors

In 1933, the main-belt asteroid 1018 Arnolda, discovered at Heidelberg Observatory by Karl Reinmuth, was named after Berliner on the occasion of his 70th birthday.