My Development as a Physicist

Abstract

It would seem that my essentially bookish nature was noticed by perceptive adults at an early age. In any case, when I was nine or ten years old, my grandfather, Theodor Zerrenner, who loved me dearly, made me a Christmas present of the comprehensive ten volume edition of Brehm’s Tierleben. I remember looking at the beautiful illustrations many times and even today I retain a certain general knowledge of the principal divisions of the animal kingdom. This preoccupation, however, came at a time when a boy does not think of his future profession and I never felt any inclination to study biology. Later on my dear Mother may have mentioned Law as a profession, but that too did not last long for other things began to occupy my attention.

Translated by P.P. Ewald and R. Bethe. The footnotes are those of the translators.— The German original has been re-published in Max von Laue, Gesammelte Schriften und Vorträge, Bd. III, pg. V–XXXIV, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1961. The two orations following here on the autobiography proper formed part of the original publication arranged by Laue in the book by Hans Hartmann, Schöpfer des neuen Weltbildes pg. 178–207, Athenäum Verlag, Bonn, 1952.