On science and English

In their recent Viewpoint, ‘Is there science beyond English?’, Rogerio Meneghini and Abel Packer discuss the dominance of English in scientific journals and the language barriers facing non‐English‐speaking scientists (Meneghini & Packer, 2007). However, if we go back a mere 100 years, the title of the essay could easily have been ‘Is there science beyond German?’. In Einstein's German World , historian Fritz Stern wrote, “It was in April 1979 in West Berlin. Raymond Aron and I were walking to an exhibit commemorating the centenary of the births of Einstein, Max von Laue, Otto …