Max B. (Max Bernhard) Weinstein

Born in Kaunas on September 1, 1852, Max Bernhard Weinstein became a German physicist and philosopher whose work moved between laboratory science and big philosophical questions. Sources identify him with the University of Berlin, where he taught physics, and note that he died in Berlin on March 25, 1918.

Weinstein is best known today for two different strands of writing. In physics, he was an early critic of Einstein's theory of relativity. In philosophy and religious thought, he wrote a broad survey of worldviews and is often credited with giving especially extensive attention to pandeism, a belief system that blends ideas of God and the universe.

That combination of scientific training and speculative reach makes him an unusual figure: a scholar interested not only in how the world works, but also in what it might mean. His books reflect the intellectual atmosphere of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when physics, philosophy, and theology still overlapped in lively and sometimes contentious ways.