Max Jammer

Max Jammer (1915–2010) was an Israeli physicist and historian of physics, born in Berlin and trained at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he completed a doctorate in experimental physics. He taught at Harvard alongside Philipp Frank, then returned to Israel, helping found the physics department at Bar-Ilan University, where he later served as rector and acting president. Jammer's scholarship combined technical physics with intellectual history. His monographs Concepts of Space (1954, with a foreword by Einstein), Concepts of Force (1957), Concepts of Mass (1961; revised 2000), and Concepts of Simultaneity (2006) traced the conceptual evolution of foundational physical notions from antiquity through quantum mechanics. In Concepts of Space he gave particular attention to theological backgrounds—Kabbalistic, Newtonian, and Cambridge Platonist conceptions of space as divine sensorium—an approach that drew both appreciation and methodological criticism from historians who questioned the linearity of his narrative. His Einstein and Religion (1999) systematically reconstructed Einstein's pronouncements on God, Spinozism, and the relation between physics and theology, becoming a standard reference but criticized by some commentators for downplaying tensions in Einstein's statements. Jammer received the Israel Prize (1993) and the Monograph Prize of the American Academy of Religion. His work occupies the interface of physics, philosophy, and religion without itself advancing a confessional position.