The Migration of European Scientists to Poly During WWII

Introduction

Born on the border of Belgium and France along the coast of the North Sea, I was exposed from a young age to the history of the world wars—through school, through my grandparents, and through the physical remnants of war that surrounded us. Exploded bunkers on the beach, shipwrecks revealed at low tide, and the thousands of tombstones scattered across the Flanders region all left a lasting impression. The idea that such a global conflict had reached a quiet little town where I spent part of my early childhood, not far from Ypres, has always fascinated me.

Over the years, I have also heard many migration stories—stories of people displaced, moving in search of safety or opportunity. Fast forward to today: I am now an engineering student at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, formerly known as the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, or simply "Poly." It was here, in an advanced seminar focused on archives, that I encountered the stories of European scientists like Herman Mark and Herbert Morawetz. Their journeys echoed those I had heard in my youth.

This intersection between my personal background and the broader scientific community I am now a part of sparked my interest in what is often called the “brain drain” of European scientists during World War II. The term, first coined by the British Royal Society to describe the migration of scientists and technologists from the United Kingdom to North America in the 1950s and 1960s (Baptiste, 2021), has since evolved to describe the large-scale emigration of educated individuals from their home countries. When a nation loses its human capital, economic development slows, often leaving those who remain in difficult circumstances. At the time, central Europe—particularly Germany and Austria—was a hub for science. Scientists like Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and John von Neumann left behind rich intellectual traditions to start anew elsewhere.

This project focuses on that migration, with particular attention to the personal and intimate stories of scientists who ultimately found their way to Poly. Drawing on the Poly Archives at the Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology, I aim to explore not only the broader phenomenon but also the specific, human paths that brought scientific brilliance to Brooklyn.