For the first two decades of the twentieth century, Planck's
professional life just kept getting better and better. His most
important contribution to physics–the invention of the light quantum–may have
been behind him, but his importance within the physics community
continued to grow. Planck's reputation as both a brilliant physicist
and a likeable, principled man marked him as a natural leader for
his fellow scientists.
In 1912, he was elected a standing secretary of the Berlin
Academy of Science's Mathematical-Physical class, which was a significant
achievement that gave him a large amount of influence over his peers.
In this new position, Planck was responsible for presiding at meetings,
keeping track of the academy's finances, and supervising the publication
of meeting proceedings. The next year, Planck's administrative
duties grew as he was made rector of the University of Berlin.
But these successes must have paled in comparison to the triumph
of 1919, when Planck was finally awarded the Nobel Prize.
His professional successes in these years were paired
with a satisfying personal life. Widowed in 1909, Planck was married
again a year later, to Marga Von Hoesslin, a niece of his first
wife. Planck and Marga were married for twenty- three years, and
they raised four children together. They lived in Grünewald, a
pleasant suburb of Berlin filled with academics from the nearby
university. Planck, who was usually rather reserved in public, apparently
could only truly relax in the company of his family.
Though busy with administrative obligations and family
duties, Planck did not lose his passion for the science that had
brought him to such a happy point. After years of studying physics,
Planck had very definite ideas of what he felt the discipline was
all about; he was ready to expound his philosophy to anyone who
would listen. And, thanks to his prominent position, he never lacked
an audience.
In December 1908, Planck gave his first major speech outside
of Germany, and he took the opportunity to explain his philosophy
of science to the outside world. The lecture addressed the subject
of whether physics described an objective reality or whether the results
of the experiments depended on the subjective experience of the
experimenters. Planck argued strongly for the former. He believed
that the purpose of science was to discover universal constants,
because these offered "the possibility of establishing units of length,
time, mass, and temperature, which necessarily retain their significance
for all cultures, even unearthly 'nonhuman ones'."
These views were in opposition to the up-and-coming philosophy
of positivism. The positivists argued that scientists could only believe
in facts they gained from their own direct experience with the
world and that science can never teach us anything about the objective
world beyond human experience. Planck was disgusted by this line
of argument, believing that it eliminated the possibility of scientific
laws independent from human observers.
In the years following his 1908 speech, Planck continued
to echo these anti- positivist themes all over the world. In 1909,
at Columbia University, he reiterated that positivism was a scientifically
useless philosophy and that the paramount goal of science should
be to establish a worldview independent of all human observers.
Planck had fame, prestige, a happy family, and a fulfilling
professional life, but none of it was enough to insulate him from
the turmoil that was to follow. For decades, Planck's Germany had
been the most powerful force in international physics, but its
luck was about to change, as scientific pursuits were overtaken
by war.
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