Max Planck On "cultivation of international scientific relations" Upon 25th Birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm Society

A 1p typed letter in German signed by physicist Max Planck (1858-1947), then in his role as President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (KSW), as "Planck" near center-right. [Berlin, Germany.] February 7, 1936. On watermarked stationery with Planck's title, "President / of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society / for the Advancement of Science" and his contact information embossed at the letterhead. Expected wear including flattened transmittal folds, and lightly darkened around the edges, else near fine. 8.125" x 11.625." Accompanied by a full English translation.

Max Planck wrote this grateful letter to Professor Dr. Luigi Califano (1901-1976), an Italian professor of medicine who had served as Department Head of Physiology and Physiological Chemistry at the Naples Zoological Station during the early 1930s. From the context of the letter, we know that Dr. Californo had recently published a birthday tribute to the KSW in "Il Mattino," a daily newspaper published in Naples, Italy.

Planck wrote, translated in part:

"Dear Professor,

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, you have had the great kindness to write a long article about the Society in the 'Mattino.' I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to you for doing so. The Society regards the cultivation of international scientific relations as one of its most important tasks and therefore particularly appreciates the acknowledgment of its work in the foreign press…"

The letter illustrates the interconnected nature of the early twentieth-century scientific community, transcending national boundaries and linguistic barriers in its unified pursuit of discovery. The KSW and the Naples Zoological Station were then two of the most preeminent research centers in Europe, and its researchers depended on one another for collaboration, exchange, and support. This international and cooperative view of the scientific community was truly modern.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Society, headquartered in Berlin, had been established as an independent institute for scientific research in 1911. Its research areas were manifold and included biology, physics, chemistry, psychiatry, law, industry, neuroscience, plant and animal breeding, and even heredity, the precursor of genetics. The KSW was renamed the Max Planck Society in 1948.

The Naples Zoological Station (today called the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn) had been founded in 1872 by a German expatriate scientist named Anton Dohrn. A Darwinian evolutionary scientist, Dohrn selected Naples as the site of his new research center because of the abundance of animal, vegetal, and marine life at arm's reach in the Gulf of Naples. Today one can still visit its nineteenth-century aquarium, the oldest such facility in the world.

Planck served twice as President of the KSW, first from 1930-1937, and again from May 1945-March 1946. Planck had taught physics at Friedrich Wilhelm University--also called the University of Berlin--between 1889-1928, and during his tenure there, had discovered energy quanta while studying black-body radiation. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for this discovery.

Luigi Califano had studied in Germany in the 1920s, and, in the words of one of his biographers, Giancarlo Vecchio, Califano "derived on the one hand the admiration for the organization and dedication to scientific research of Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries in general, and on the other the drive, which he communicated to many of his young students and researchers, to get out of the provincialism of Italian biological research and to learn from foreign laboratories and researchers."

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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