Sir

Vaclav Smil's delightful Millennium Essay “Genius loci” (Nature 409, 21; 2001) emphasizes the importance of Budapest in twentieth-century science. I would like to propose Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), as another locus in central Europe. All the following scientists were born or grew up in Breslau: Max Born (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1954), Richard Courant (mathematician, 1888–1972), Paul Ehrlich (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1908), Fritz Haber (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1918), Reinhard Selten (Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 1994), Otto Stern (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1943) and Otto Toeplitz (mathematician, 1881–1940).

The scientific glory of the city is now lost. All in the above list were of Jewish descent and most were forced to leave Germany during the Nazi period. During and after the Second World War, the entire composition of the city changed.

Reinhard Selten in his Nobel prize autobiographical sketch (see http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1994/selten-autobio.html) says, “I have never visited Wroclaw since the war. Heavy fighting destroyed most of the town in which I grew up and most of the familiar places of my youth look different now.”