Holger Schmidt, Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering

The Physicists by Friedrich Duerrenmatt

This play deals with the responsibilities that scientists have for their discoveries and how to deal with them. Despite the serious subject matter and its rather bleak conclusion, it is a joy to read thanks to Duerrenmatt's beautiful style and dry wit. I first read "The physicists" in high school around the time I decided to become a physicist myself. This book taught me that our choices as scientists may have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. Therefore, they need to be made carefully and consciously.