Acknowledgments
This book builds on the work carried out within the Research Program History of the Max Planck Society (GMPG), which also generously funded its production and open access availability. For their contribution in one way or another to this volume we wish to thank our many colleagues from the GMPG team with whom we discussed a wide number of topics and whose views and suggestions were invaluable at all stages of writing. Many—but by no means all—of their intellectual contributions are reflected in the references. For a more definitive view of the intellectual connections between this book and the GMPG project, see the main research output of the project: Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: Wissenschafts- und Zeitgeschichte 1945–2005, vol. 1. Jürgen Kocka, Carsten Reinhard, Jürgen Renn und Florian Schmaltz (eds.), forthcoming in 2023 with Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
We are extremely indebted to all those who read the working drafts of particular chapters at crucial moments of their development. In particular we thank Angela Creager, Alessandro De Angelis, Reinhard Genzel, Dieter Hoffmann, Werner Hoffmann, Till Kirsten, Roberto Lalli, Adele La Rana, Paolo Lipari, Carsten Reinhardt, Jürgen Renn, Florian Schmaltz, Christian Spiering, and Joachim Trümper.
In the publication phase, we benefited from the invaluable editorial support of Lindy Divarci and Birgit Kolboske. We are also grateful to Jill Denton for her meticulous copyediting of the English language.
We would like to acknowledge the generous assistance we received from Florian Spillert during our research in the Archives of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and are particularly indebted to Susanne Uebele whose unstinting support gave us the opportunity to include the photographic materials presented in the first chapter. The Director of the Archives, Kristina Starkloff, consistently supported and facilitated the consultation of archival materials. We also thank Anita Hollier at the CERN Archives in Geneva and Antonella Cotugno at the Archives of the Department of Physics at Sapienza University of Rome for their kindness in supporting our archival research.
Special thanks go to the library staff at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science for their patient guidance and help in obtaining rare materials. We appreciate the technical support provided by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science for our recording of the oral history interviews. Finally, we thank the Max Planck Society’s GWDG branch of our project for providing the digital infrastructure and staffing through which we, as all in the GMPG project, were able to access digitized archival material and novel analytical tools.
We are deeply grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.
Last but not least, our deepest gratitude goes to all the researchers who generously provided interviews, conversations, and personal communications that were crucial and enlightening in understanding the developments, dynamics, and intricacies of the complex and multi-layered reality of the Max Planck Society. They are acknowledged individually in the list of interviewees and footnotes. This research has made extensive use of the SAO/NASA’s Astrophysics Data System.
Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon
May 31, 2022