Download or read book Globalizing Physics written by Roberto Lalli and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access book available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Following the centenary of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, this volume features contributions from leading science historians from around the world on the changing roles of the institution in international affairs from its foundation in 1922 to the present. The case studies presented in this volume show the multitude of functions that IUPAP had and how these were related to the changing international political contexts. The book is divided into three parts. The first discusses the interwar period demonstrating how the exclusion of communities of the Central Powers from international scientific institutions imposed by victorious allied countries made IUPAP ineffective until the end of World War II. The second part analyzes the changing roles assumed by IUPAP starting from its complete renovation after World War II. Case studies covering the role of IUPAP in physics education, in metrology, in joint commissions with other unions and in defining the complex relations between pure and applied physics provide examples of IUPAP's impact on the world of science. Part III squarely addresses the science diplomacy aspects of IUPAP during the Cold War highlighting the importance of IUPAP in furthering diplomatic goals and explaining the origin of the pursuit of the free circulation of scientists as the activity that characterized the main function of international unions during the Cold War. Highlighting how often scientific agendas and political imperatives were entangled in the activities of IUPAP, the book analyzes the work of the Union as exercises of science diplomacy, thus contributing to the current debate on the use of science and technology in international relations.
Download or read book No Truth Except in the Details written by A.J. Kox and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Redirecting Science Niels Bohr Philanthropy and the Rise of Nuclear Physics written by Finn Aaserud and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why do complex scientific disciplines such as physics change emphasis from one sub-discipline to another? Do such transitions stem entirely from developments within the discipline itself or also from external factors? This book addresses these questions by examining the transition from atomic to nuclear physics, theoretically and experimentally, at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen in the 1930s. On the basis of extensive archival research, Finn Aaserud shows that the “Copenhagen spirit,” the playful research atmosphere under Bohr’s fatherly guidance that permeated the Institute, thrived because of extra-scientific circumstances that Bohr exploited to the fullest, such as the need to help Jewish physicists out of Hitler’s Germany and the changing funding policies of private foundations, notably those of the Rockefeller Foundation which made it opportune to introduce research in experimental biology at the Institute. “A clear, carefully developed and substantially convincing argument... Aaserud gives a detailed and impressively documented account of the direction of Bohr’s scientific interests... Aaserud is... to be congratulated for his original, clear — indeed, didactic — work of scholarship and enlightenment.” — Paul Forman, Physics Today “A professional historian’s study of the happenings at the Niels Bohr Institute in the decisive years 1930 to 1940... In particular, the... support of the Institute by Danish and other foundations, mainly the Rockefeller Foundation, are treated in great detail, revealing many interesting aspects of these relationships... The detailed accounts... of Bohr’s negotiations are a testimony to Bohr’s uncanny ability to get what he wanted from the various foundations... Aaserud’s book is an invaluable source of information [showing] that Bohr was not only an inspiring physicist and philosopher but also a cunning negotiator who knew how to make use of his great reputation for the benefit of science.” — Victor F. Weisskopf, Science “Aaserud elucidates Bohr’s skills not only as mentor and guiding hand behind the ‘Copenhagen spirit,’ but also as financial negotiator.” — Neil Wasserman, Isis, A Journal of the History of Science Society “This book teaches us that running such [a truly elite] institution required entrepreneurial skills as well as scientific genius. Bohr had an abundance of both.” — Jeremy Bernstein, Nature “Redirecting Science is the history of Bohr’s institute during the 1930s when it experienced a drastic change in its research priorities, from a laissez-faire mode of work and lack of clearly defined research programme to a concerted research effort in nuclear physics and experimental biology... Aaserud gives a highly interesting account of the interaction between physics and biology... Aaserud’s carefully documented work is an excellent example of how institutional history may transcend social and institutional limitations and integrate also conceptual history of science.” — Helge Kragh, Centaurus “By showing that a new research programme at one of the most important scientific institutes in the world was triggered, and pushed forward, by social and financial considerations, this book delivers yet another blow to the tired old idea that scientific knowledge is driven by its own internal, inexorable logic. It also throws valuable light on Bohr’s activities and strategies as a fundraiser and institution builder.” — John Krige, The British Journal for the History of Science
Download or read book The Conceptual Completion and Extensions of Quantum Mechanics 1932 1941 Epilogue Aspects of the Further Development of Quantum Theory 1942 1999 written by Jagdish Mehra and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2000 with total page 964 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Genius in the Shadows written by William Lanouette and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-known names such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are usually those that surround the creation of the atom bomb. One name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The man who first developed the idea of harnessing energy from nuclear chain reactions, he is curiously buried with barely a trace in the history of this well-known and controversial topic. Born in Hungary and educated in Berlin, he escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and that first year developed his concept of nuclear chain reactions. In order to prevent Nazi scientists from stealing his ideas, he kept his theories secret, until he and Albert Einstein pressed the US government to research atomic reactions and designed the first nuclear reactor. Though he started his career out lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, he concluded it with founding, in 1962, the first political action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World. Besides his career in atomic energy, he also studied biology and sparked ideas that won others the Nobel Prize. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where Szilard spent his final days, was developed from his concepts to blend science and social issues.
Download or read book The Physicists written by Daniel J. Kevles and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This magnificent account of the coming of age of physics in America has been heralded as the best introduction to the history of science in the United States. Unsurpassed in its breadth and literary style, Kevles's account portrays the brilliant scientists who became a powerful force in bringing the world into a revolutionary new era. The book ranges widely as it links these exciting developments to the social, cultural, and political changes that occurred from the post-Civil War years to the present. Throughout, Kevles keeps his eye on the central question of how an avowedly elitist enterprise grew and prospered in a democratic culture. In this new edition, the author has brought the story up to date by providing an extensive, authoritative, and colorful account of the Superconducting Super Collider, from its origins in the international competition and intellectual needs of high-energy particle physics, through its establishment as a multibillion-dollar project, to its termination, in 1993, as a result of angry opposition within the American physics community and the Congress.
Download or read book Einstein in Context written by Mara Beller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-10-29 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This special issue of Science and Context examines the entire area of scientific inquiry surrounding Einstein, presenting controversies and debates within their contexts.
Download or read book Union Catalogue of Scientific Libraries in the University of Cambridge written by University of Cambridge and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Invisible Industrialist written by J. Gaudillière and published by Springer. This book was released on 1998-07-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Industrial methods, and industrially produced instruments, reagents and living organisms are central to research activities today. They play a key role in the homogenization and the diffusion of laboratory practices, thus in their transformation into a stable and unproblematic knowledge about the natural world. This book displays the - frequently invisible - role of industry in the construction of fundamental scientific knowledge through the examination of case studies taken from the history of nineteenth and the twentieth century physics, chemistry and biomedical sciences.
Download or read book Changing Landscapes of Nuclear Physics written by Klaus Fischer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuclear physics between 1921 and 1947 shaped more than any other science thepolitical landscape of our century and the public opinion on physical research. Using quantitative scientometric methods, a new branch in the history of science, the author focuses on the developments of nuclear physics in these formative years paying special attention to theimpact of German emigrants on the evolution of the field as a cognitive and social unity. The book is based on a thorough analysis of various citation analyses thus producing results that should be more replicable and more objective. The scientometric techniques should complement the more qualitative approach usually applied in historical writing. This makes the text an interesting study also for the historian in general.
Download or read book Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics written by W.R. Shea and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: and less as the emanation unden\'ent radioactive decay, and it became motion less after about 30 seconds. Since this process was occurring very rapidly, Hahn and Sackur marked the position of the pointer on a scale with pencil marks. As a timing device they used a metronome that beat out intervals of approximately 1. 3 seconds. This simple method enabled them to determine that the half-life of the emanations of actinium and emanium were the same. Although Giesel's measurements had been more precise than Debierne's, the name of actinium was retained since Debierne had made the discovery first. Hahn now returned to his sample of barium chloride. He soon conjectured that the radium-enriched preparations must harbor another radioactive sub stance. The liquids resulting from fractional crystallization, which were sup posed to contain radium only, produced two kinds of emanation. One was the long-lived emanation of radium, the other had a short life similar to the emanation produced by thorium. Hahn tried to separate this substance by adding some iron to the solutions that should have been free of radium, but to no avail. Later the reason for his failure became apparent. The element that emitted the thorium emanation was constantly replenished by the ele ment believed to be radium. Hahn succeeded in enriching a preparation until it was more than 100,000 times as intensive in its radiation as the same quantity of thorium.
Download or read book Scientific Papers of Arthur Holly Compton written by Arthur Holly Compton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1973-12 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Holly Compton was one of the great leaders in physics of the twentieth century. In this volume, Robert S. Shankland, who was once a student of Compton's, has collected and edited the most important of Professor Compton's papers on X-rays—the field of his greatest achievement—and on other related topics. Compton entered the field of X-ray research in 1913 and carried on active work until the 1930s, when he began to specialize in cosmic rays. During the years when Compton was an active leader in X-ray research, he made many notable contributions which are reflected in the papers presented here. He was the first to prove several important optical properties of X-rays, including scattering, complete polarization, and total reflection. He was also the first, with his student R. L. Doan, to use ruled gratings for the production of X-ray spectra. Professor Compton's greatest discovery, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1927, was the Compton Effect. This was the outgrowth of experiments he had initiated during a year at Cambridge in 1919-20. He did the major portion of these experiments at Washington University in St. Louis during the period 1920-24. His work demonstrated that in the scattering of X-rays by electrons, the radiation behaves like corpuscles, and that the interaction between the X-ray corpuscles and the electrons in the scatter is completely described by the principles of the conservation of energy and momentum for the collisions of particles. In his introduction, Professor Shankland gives a historical account of the papers, narrates Professor Compton's early scientific career, and shows how he arrived at a quantum explanation of the Compton scattering after eliminating all classical explanations.
Download or read book Author title Catalog written by University of California, Berkeley. Library and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 1064 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Conceptual Completion and the Extensions of Quantum Mechanics 1932 1941 Epilogue Aspects of the Further Development of Quantum Theory 1942 1999 written by Jagdish Mehra and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-06-29 with total page 956 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum Theory, together with the principles of special and general relativity, constitute a scientific revolution that has profoundly influenced the way in which we think about the universe and the fundamental forces that govern it. The Historical Development of Quantum Theory is a definitive historical study of that scientific work and the human struggles that accompanied it from the beginning. Drawing upon such materials as the resources of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, the Niels Bohr Archives, and the archives and scientific correspondence of the principal quantum physicists, as well as Jagdish Mehra's personal discussions over many years with most of the architects of quantum theory, the authors have written a rigorous scientific history of quantum theory in a deeply human context. This multivolume work presents a rich account of an intellectual triumph: a unique analysis of the creative scientific process. The Historical Development of Quantum Theory is science, history, and biography, all wrapped in the story of a great human enterprise. Its lessons will be an aid to those working in the sciences and humanities alike.||Comments by distinguished physicists on "The Historical Development of Quantum Theory":||"¿the most definitive work undertaken by anyone on this vast and most important development in the history of physics. Jagdish Mehra, trained in theoretical physics under Pauli, Heisenberg, and Dirac, pursued the vision of his youth to write about the historical and conceptual development of quantum theory in the 20th century¿This series of books on the HDQT has thus become the most authentic and permanent source of our knowledge of how quantum theory, its extensions and applications developed. My heartfelt congratulations."|-Hans A. Bethe, Nobel Laureate||"A thrilling and magnificent achievement!"|-Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS, Nobel Laureate||"¿capture(s) precisely, accurately, and thoroughly the very essence and all the fundamental details of the theory, and that is a remarkable achievement¿I have greatly enjoyed reading these books and learned so many new things from them. This series of books will remain a permanent source of knowledge about the creation and development of quantum theory. Congratulations!"|-Paul A. Dirac, FRS, Nobel Laureate||"The wealth and accuracy of detail in 'The Historical Development of Quantum Theory' are breathtaking."|-Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Laureate
Download or read book Making 20th Century Science written by Stephen G. Brush and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, the scientific method has been said to require proposing a theory, making a prediction of something not already known, testing the prediction, and giving up the theory (or substantially changing it) if it fails the test. A theory that leads to several successful predictions is more likely to be accepted than one that only explains what is already known but not understood. This process is widely treated as the conventional method of achieving scientific progress, and was used throughout the twentieth century as the standard route to discovery and experimentation. But does science really work this way? In Making 20th Century Science, Stephen G. Brush discusses this question, as it relates to the development of science throughout the last century. Answering this question requires both a philosophically and historically scientific approach, and Brush blends the two in order to take a close look at how scientific methodology has developed. Several cases from the history of modern physical and biological science are examined, including Mendeleev's Periodic Law, Kekule's structure for benzene, the light-quantum hypothesis, quantum mechanics, chromosome theory, and natural selection. In general it is found that theories are accepted for a combination of successful predictions and better explanations of old facts. Making 20th Century Science is a large-scale historical look at the implementation of the scientific method, and how scientific theories come to be accepted.
Download or read book Restructuring Of Physical Sciences In Europe And The United States 1945 1960 The Proceedings Of The International Conference written by Michelangelo De Maria and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1989-06-01 with total page 829 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Proceedings of the Fifth Course of the International School of Intermediate Energy Nuclear Physics written by Roland Bergère and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
