Early familial and societal influence on the work of the relativist Peter G. Bergmann

Peter Bergmann was born in Berlin in 1915. When his pediatrician mother Emmy Grunwald separated from his father Max Bergmann in 1921 he relocated with her to Freiburg. Her sister Clara Grunwald was the original founder of the Montessori educational movement in Germany, and this played a role in her establishment of such a residential primary school in their home in Freiburg. Although I did develop a close relationship with Peter when he became my these advisor in the 1970’s, it was only later that I learned from him of his visits with his aunt – but not of her murder in Auschwitz in 1943. In 1922 Max left his position as a Deputy Director of a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin to assume the role as the first Director of the KWI Institute for Leather research in Dresden. In 1931 Peter registered for two semesters in university studies at the Technical University in Dresden before completing his degree in Freiburg. Because his Jewish background forbade his entry into a doctoral physics program in Germany he began these studies in Prague in 1933. Meanwhile his father managed to assume a position at the Rockefellar Institute for Medical Research in New York. He was by this time recognized as the leading world authority in protein chemistry. Peter surprisingly managed to join Albert Einstein at the Princeton Institute for Advanced study in 1936, continuing collaboration with Einstein until 1941. I will discuss the interrelationship of Peter’s physics work over this period with this familial and societal background. My report is based in large part on numerous archival sites I have visited in Germany and the United States.