Questions and answers with Brandon Brown

Brandon Brown is grateful for the “long leash” that academia affords. Otherwise, he would not have been able to jump from high-temperature superconductors to science writing, to biophysics, and, most recently, to history of science.

Brown earned his PhD in physics at Oregon State University, where he studied vortex dynamics in high-temperature superconductors. From there, he completed postdoctoral work in science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz—his writing for general audiences has appeared in such outlets as New Scientist, Seed, and the Huffington Post. Now a professor of physics at the University of San Francisco, Brown’s current research focus is sensory biophysics—among other topics, he studies the electric sense in sharks and their close relatives.

Earlier this year, Brown’s first book, Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War (Oxford University Press), was released. In his review for this month’s issue of Physics Today, historian of science Helge Kragh writes that Brown “makes much use” of John Heilbron’s acclaimed biography of Max Planck, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man (Harvard University Press, 2000), but “offers a different perspective and adds new material and insights.”

Brown shares some additional thoughts about the book in the exchange below with Physics Today.

PT: How did you arrive at the decision to write a biography of Max Planck?

BROWN: I have actually wanted to do this since I was 19 years old and learned about Planck in a Modern Physics course at Rice University. The professor, Barry Dunning, mentioned that Planck was out over his skis for years after his discovery of quantum theory, and I was hooked. [That desire] simmered for about 25 years, and when I’d completed some other projects, I decided to go for it. I’m extremely lucky to work in a “long leash” environment that celebrates efforts like this one.

PT: How did you prepare to write this scholarly historical work, and what advice would you give to other scientists not trained in history or in writing who are thinking about doing the same?

BROWN: I collected articles here and there in a folder for many years. I did a lot of background reading about Planck, his contemporaries, his culture, and his historical context. During a recent sabbatical, I was able to visit German archives and struck up exchanges with some very generous German science historians.

If I have any advice for scientists considering a similar project, I would say three things: Be humble, not just about not being a historian but also about what you think you learned about science history in science classes; take your time (I wish I had taken more time); and share the project. My book was much improved when I shared parts and drafts, even though it was always more fun to sit and craft it and edit it in a serene, solitary state.

And particularly if you’re an experimentalist—a wires-and-pipes person like me—you might benefit from talking a lot with a theorist. My friend and colleague Horacio Camblong (at the University of San Francisco) had great input, and we had a lot of fun talking about how to convey difficult physics concepts in clear, engaging text.

PT: What new aspects of Planck’s work or life did you discover in the course of your research for the book? What aspect has stuck with you the most?

BROWN: The breadth and tenacity of Planck’s interest within physics and beyond physics still astounds me. For instance, he stepped through the ether problem with Hendrik Lorentz in 1898 and 1899, even while he was deeply focused on thermal radiation. (This exchange may have primed him to enthusiastically embrace and defend Einstein’s special relativity in 1905.)

In the end, though, the aspect that’s stuck with me is Planck’s incredible mental flexibility. I hope his ability to follow evidence and change his mind, in each phase of his long life, might serve as an inspiration to us all in an era where changing one’s mind seems increasingly rare, whether within science or without.

PT: What contemporary examples do you think compare with the political situation Planck faced? What can scientists in such situations learn from Planck?

BROWN: We definitely see examples today of political movements wanting to dismiss scientific results or cherry-pick bits that support their beliefs. Timothy Snyder, author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Tim Duggan Books, 2015), sees relevant lessons as he annotates the Nazis turning methodically away from science and evidence-based thinking. And Freeman Dyson, who riffed on my book for the New York Review of Books, sees lessons in how one responds to a malevolent state (see the August Q&A with Dyson). For example, Einstein, the world citizen, loudly voiced concerns from America when the Nazis came to power, while Planck, who deeply identified as German, maintained his posts.

My research definitely opened my eyes to how extremism can creep forward one trivial-looking step at a time, from a laughable sideshow to an alarming force. Perhaps the lesson is that one must speak early and loudly to extremism, instead of hoping it just goes away. Speaking loudly later is, as Planck put it, trying to “stop a landslide once it has started.” How one can speak effectively into the various hermetic echo chambers of today’s anger-ready populace is a separate and important question.

PT: What’s your next project?

BROWN: It’s a bit too early to say, but I am busily researching a couple of possible science biographies. I would love to write another book.

PT: What books are you currently reading?

BROWN: I’m reading three works of nonfiction. Blue Highways: A Journey into America (Little, Brown and Co, 1982) by William Least Heat-Moon is an incredible time capsule of pre-cellular, pre-internet America. The Last Love Song (St. Martin’s Press, 2015) by Tracy Daugherty paints a context-rich biography of the writer Joan Didion. And Robert Hooke: New Studies (Boydell Press, 1989), edited by Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer; the scholarly essays in this collection may no longer be new, but they are still fascinating.