Was Stephen Timoshenko right about the Jewish scientists in Germany?

Abstract

Abstract Stephen Timoshenko was the author of numerous textbooks on various aspects of applied mechanics, and through them contributed to its rapid development in the world. As always, the community is also interested in the personal side of the scientists. This paper is devoted to a single statement made by Stephen Timoshenko in his autobiographical book. Specifically, it concerns Timoshenko's at least partial “explanation” of the Holocaust that took place during WWII. Whereas Timoshenko's statement constituted, to the present writer, open antisemitism, it does not seem to disturb many researchers who continue to honor him in various ways. “Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship,” according to Saul Lieberman. Hence the present article presents an investigation of Timoshenko's nonsensical and overly antisemitic statement. This author corresponded with a number of historians of science all repudiating Timoshenko's assertions. Most importantly, the correspondents shed additional vivid light on the Holocaust as experienced by Jewish scientists.