Beginning with a couple of essays dealing with the experimental and mathematical foundations of physics in the work of Henry Cavendish and Joseph Fourier, the volume goes on to consider the broad areas of investigation that constituted the central foci of the development of the physics discipline in the nineteenth century: electricity and magnetism, including especially the work of Michael Faraday, William Thomson, and James Clerk Maxwell; and thermodynamics and matter theory, including the theoretical work and legacy of Josiah Willard Gibbs, some experimental work relating to thermodynamics and kinetic theory of Heinrich Hertz, and the work of Felix Seyler-Hoppe on hemoglobin in the neighboring field of biophysics/biochemistry. Moving on to the beginning of the twentieth century, a set of three articles on Albert Einstein deal with his early career and various influences on his work. Finally, a set of historiographical issues important for the history of physics are discussed, and the chronological conclusion of the volume is an article on the Solvay Conference of 1933.
For physicists interested in the history of their discipline, historians and philosophers of science, and graduate students in these and related disciplines.
Author(s): Russell McCormmach (auth.), A. J. Kox, Daniel M. Siegel (eds.)
Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 167
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Year: 1995
Language: English
Pages: 382
Tags: History;Interdisciplinary Studies;History of Medicine;History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics
Front Matter....Pages i-xxv
The Last Experiment of Henry Cavendish....Pages 1-30
Reading Mathematics, Constructing Physics: Fourier and His Readers, 1822–1850....Pages 31-54
Electromagnetic Energy and the Early History of the Energy Principle....Pages 55-78
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Maxwell Found There....Pages 79-93
Electric Discharge in Rarefied Gases: The Dominion of Experiment. Faraday. Plücker. Hittorf....Pages 95-134
Gibbs and the Energeticists....Pages 135-169
Heinrich Hertz’s Attempt to Generate a Novel Account of Evaporation....Pages 171-189
Crystals and Carriers: The Chemical and Physiological Identification of Hemoglobin....Pages 191-243
Einstein, Specific Heats, and Residual Rays: The History of a Retracted Paper....Pages 245-257
From Periphery to Center: Einstein’s Path from Bern to Berlin (1902–1914)....Pages 259-271
Einstein and Books....Pages 273-279
Text and Context in Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Theory....Pages 281-297
Prediction and Theory Evaluation in Physics and Astronomy....Pages 299-318
The Power of the Word....Pages 319-332
The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear Physics at the Crossroads....Pages 333-362
Back Matter....Pages 363-382
