In 1943, on orders from the German Air Ministry, young physicist Peter P. Wegener left the Russian front and reported to the Baltic village of Peenemünde. His assignment was to work at the supersonic wind tunnels of the rocket laboratories of the German Army. Here Wernher von Braun led a

Schlieren and shadowgraph techniques are basic and valuable tools in various scientific and engineering disciplines. They allow us to see the invisible: the optical inhomogeneities in transparent media like air, water, and glass that otherwise cause only ghostly distortions of our normal vision. These techniques are discussed briefly in many

From the pioneering glider flights of Otto Lilienthal (1891) to the advanced avionics of today’s Airbus passenger jets, aeronautical research in Germany has been at the forefront of the birth and advancement of aeronautics. On the occasion of the centennial commemoration of the Wright Brother’s first powered flight (December 1903),

This unique and encyclopedic reference work describes the evolution of the physics of modern shock wave and detonation from the earlier and classical percussion. The history of this complex process is first reviewed in a general survey. Subsequently, the subject is treated in more detail and the book is richly

Rainer Eisfeld’s book highlights the merits of socio-historical research into topics infrequently covered by mainstream political science. Directing attention to the need for carefully scrutinizing the convenient “truths” of established - post-Nazi, post-Communist - political narratives, its chapters encourage reflection of the discipline’s history and state of the art. A