At first glance, Richard Weiner's autobiography seems unusal. Spliced into the story of his life are chapters covering the work he has done
as a physicist so that early chapters are titled The Wandering Years, Politics-Premonitium of War; War, The Ghetto and The Isometric Shift on Spectral Lines.
But why not? Doesn't a poet or novelist writing of his life give examples of his creative output within the book? Isn't a composer frequently citing his work in his autobiography giving the reader a complete view of his life?
So it is with Dr. Weiner a world recognized physicist and a man I have known for forty years. It just happens that his work in physics is arcane for the layman. As he says in his preface ,his use of analogies in the physical sciences is unqiue and the stress on the historical circumstances under which a new idea was developed will be a document of significant importance and value to students and his colleagues. But what about the rest of us who are scientifically challenged?
Standing by itself, Richard Weiner's life seems a 20th century fairy tale
where the hero overcomes incredible obstacles to succeed, a Balkan Horation Alger story, if you will.
Born in a province of Bukovina, originally part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, then Romania . Because of the war and its aftermath for the first fifteen years of his life he lived in three different countries, without ever changing his house. He finally went to Romania there he achieved and suffered. He achieved an education and took a prominet place in the educational system at the University of Bucharest as a 'senior physicist.' In 1958, Dr. Weiner applied to emigrate from Romania to Israel and that effectively ended his career. Not only was his request ignored, he was demoted to a meaningless job with a salary less than that earned by school secretaries.
For the next eleven years, Dr. Weiner suffered financial hardship and professional restrictions that seriously curtailed his work. In 1969 he escaped the Romanian dictatorship by crossing into Austria form Czechoslvakia while on a supposed vacation.
From that moment on, though he and his wife Uli continued to face hardships, they were finally free. The balance of his biography is taken up with his life and work in the Free World, with his teaching positions in the United States and Germany, with his professional travels throughout the world, the people he met, the work he did. He ended his career at the University of Marburg, which, curiously, was the first German university to fire its Jewish professors when Hitler came to power. Today in retirment he and his family divide their time between Paris and Marburg.
The US price of $88 will discourage a lot of individual sales for this book. But I believe it should have a place in both public and universiity libraries as the testament of an unique and important individual.
