HISTORY OF PHYSICS AND MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

Bill Rankin, with Peter Galison, spring 2005

I. SOCIAL & INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF PHYSICS

Nineteenth-Century Mathematical Physics and Pedagogy

Daston, Lorraine. 1986. “The Physicalist Tradition in Early 19th-Century French Geometry.” in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 17 (1986).

Jungnickel, Christa and Russell McCormmach. The Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohn to Einstein. 2 vols. 1986.

Kuhn, Thomas. “Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery.” in The Essential Tension. [1959].

——— “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science.” in The Essential Tension. [1961].

Olesko, Kathryn. Physics as a Calling: Discipline and Practice in the Königsberg Seminar for Physics. 1991.

Warwick, Andrew. Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics. 2003.

Wise, M. Norton. “The Maxwell Literature and British Dynamical Theory.” in HSPS 13 (1982).

Quantum Mechanics: Heisenberg/Schrödinger, Bohr/Einstein, and their “Milieu”

Beller, Mara. “Matrix Theory Before Schrödinger: Philosophy, Problems, Consequences.” in Isis 74 (1983).

——— “Born’s Probabilistic Interpretation: A Case-Study of Concepts in Flux.” in SHPS 21 (1990).

——— “The Birth of Bohr’s Complementarity.” in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992).

Beller, Mara and Arthur Fine. “Bohr’s Response to EPR.” in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy. 1994.

Bohr, Niel. “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” Physical Review 48 (1935): 696-700.

——— “Discussion with Einstein.” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. 1949.

Cassidy, David. Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. 1993.

Einstein, Albert, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777-780.

Fine, Arthur. The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory. 1986.

Forman, Paul. “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory.” in HSPS 3 (1971).

——— “The Reception of an Acausal Quantum Mechanics.” in The Reception of Unconventional Science. 1978.

Galison, Peter. “Kuhn and the Quantum Controversy.” in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32 (1981).

Heilbron, John. “The Earliest Missionaries of Copenhagen Spirit.” in Science in Reflection. 1988.

Hendry, John. “Weimar Culture and Quantum Causality.” in Darwin to Einstein. 1980.

Jammer, Max. The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. 1974. (chapter on Bohr-Einstein)

Kaiser, David. “Bringing the Human Actors Back on Stage: The Personal Context of the Einstein-Bohr Debate.” British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1994).

Kraft and Kroes. “Adaption of Scientific Knowledge to an Intellectual Environment.” Centaurus 27 (1984).

Moore, Walter. Schrödinger: Life and Thought. 1989.

Murdoch, Dugald. Niels Bohr’s Philosophy of Physics. 1987. (chapters 1-3, on complementarity)

Radder, Hans. “Kramer and the Forman Thesis.” History of Science 21 (1983).

The Origins and Spread of Special and General Relativity

Galison, Peter. “Minkowski’s Space-Time.” in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 10 (1979).

Holton, Gerald. “On the Origin of the Special Theory of Relativity.” in Thematic Origins. [1967].

——— “Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality.” in Thematic Origins. [1968].

——— “Einstein, Michelson, and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment.” in Thematic Origins. [1969].

Howard, Don and John Stachel, eds. Einstein and the History of General Relativity. 1989.

Kragh, Helge. Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe. 1996.

Miller, Arthur. “The Special Relativity Theory.” in Albert Einstein, historical and cultural perspectives. 1982.

Pais, Abraham. Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. 1982. (section IV)

Warwick, Andrew. “Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics, Part I.” in SHPS 23 (1992).

——— “Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics, Part II.” in SHPS 24 (1993).

Particle (meta)Physics and the Standard Model

Anderson, Philip. “More is Different.” Science 177 (1972).

Galison, Peter. How Experiments End. 1987.

——— Image and Logic. 1997.

Pickering, Andrew. Constructing Quarks. 1984.

——— The Mangle of Practice. 1995.

Weinberg, Steven. Dreams of a Final Theory. 1992.

II. SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY

Nineteenth-Century Field Theory, Metrological Standards, and Telegraphic Imperialism

Cahan, David. An Institute for an Empire: The Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt 1871-1918. 1989.

Gooday, Graeme. “Precision Measurement and the Genesis of Physics Teaching Laboratories in Victorian Britain.” British Journal for the History of Science 23 (1990).

Galison, Peter. Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps. 2003.

Hunt, Bruce. “Michael Faraday, Cable Telegraphy, and the Rise of Field Theory.” in History of Technology 13 (1991).

——— “The Ohm is Where the Art Is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards.” in Osiris 9 (1994).

——— “Doing Science in a Global Empire: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in Victorian Britain.” in Victorian Science in Context. 1997.

Morus, Iwan. “‘The Nervous System Of Britain’: Space, Time, and the Electric Telegraph in the Victorian Age.” in British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2000).

Olesko, Kathryn. “The Meaning of Precision: The Exact Sensibility in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany.” in The Values of Precision. 1995.

Schaffer, Simon. “Late Victorian Metrology and its Instrumentation: A manufactory of Ohms," in Invisible Connections. 1992.

——— “Metrology, Metrification and Victorian Values.” in Victorian Science in Context. 1997.

——— “Physics Laboratories and the Victorian Country House.” in Making Space for Science. 1998.

——— “Accurate Measurement is an English Science.” in The Values of Precision. 1992.

Smith, Crosbie and M. Norton Wise. Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin. 1989.

From Inventor-Entrepreneurs to Corporate Research Labs

Carlson, W. Bernard and Michael Gorman. “Understanding Invention as a Cognitive Process: The Case of Thomas Edison and Early Motion Pictures, 1888-91.” in Social Studies of Science 20 (1990).

——— “Interpreting Invention as a Cognitive Process: The Case of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Telephone.” in Science, Technology, & Human Values 15 (1990).

Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric. 1991.

Hoddeson, Lillian. “The Discovery of the Point-Contact Transistor.” in HSPS 12 (1981).

Hounshell, David and John Smith. “The Nylon Drama.” in Invention and Technology (1988).

——— Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D 1902-1980. 1988.

Hounshell, David. “Du Pont and the Management of Large-Scale Research and Development.” in Big Science. 1992.

——— “The Evolution of Industrial Research in the United States.” in Engines of Innovation. 1996.

Hughes, Thomas. Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer. 1971.

——— Networks of Power. 1983.

Jenkins, Reese. “George Eastman and the Coming of Industrial Research in America,” in Technology in America. 1981.

Marsh, Ulrich. “Strategies for Success: Research organisations in German chemical companies and IG Farben until 1936.” in History and Technology 12 (1994).

Meyer-Thurow, Georg. “The Industrialization of Invention: A Case Study from the German Chemical Industry.” in Isis 73 (1982).

Reich, Leonard The Making of American Industrial Research: science and business at GE and Bell, 1876-1926. 1985.

Rocke, Alan. “Origins and Spread of the ‘Giesen Model.’” in Ambix 50 (2003).

Wise, George. “Ionists in Industry: Physical Chemistry at General Electric, 1900-1915.” in Isis 74 (1983).

——— Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the origins of U.S. industrial research. 1985.

III. PHYSICS, WAR, AND GOLDEN TRIANGLES

The Bomb

Beyerchen, Alan. Scientists Under Hitler. 1977.

Galison, Peter and Jeremy Bernstein. “In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Hydrogen Bomb.” in Historical Studies in the Physical and Biologicla Sciences 19 (1989).

Gusterson, Hugh. “Nuclear Weapons Testing.” in Naked Science. 1996.

Hoddenson, Lillian. “The Los Alamos Implosion Program, 1943-1945.” in Big Science. 1992.

Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb. 1994.

MacKenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. 1990.

Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 1986.

Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race. 1987.

Walker, Mark. German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power. 1989.

“Big Science” as Rhetoric, Institution, and Culture

Capshew, James and Karen Rader, “Big Science: Price to the Present.” Osiris 7 (1992).

Forman, Paul. “Behind Quantum Electronics.” in HSPBS 18 (1927).

Galison, Peter. “Physics Between War and Peace.” in Science, Technology, and the Military, vol 1. 1988.

Kaiser, David. “Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II.” in Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (2002).

——— “The Postwar Suburbanization of American Physics.” American Quarterly (2004).

Pestre, Dominique and John Krige. “Some Thoughts on the Early History of CERN.” in Big Science. 1992.

Seidel, Robert. “The Origins of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.” in Big Science. 1992.

Traweek, Sharon. Beamtimes and Lifetimes. 1988.

Science, Industry, and the Academy

Galison, Peter, Bruce Hevly, and Rebecca Lowen. “Stanford and the Growth of Physics Research.” in Big Science. 1992.

Hollinger, David. “Money and Academic Freedom a Half-Century after McCarthyism.” in Unfettered Expression: Freedom in American Intellectual Life. 2000.

Kargon, Robert, Stuart Leslie, and Erica Schoenberger. “Science Regions and the Organization of Research and Development.” in Big Science. 1992.

Kevles, Daniel. The Physicists. 1978.

Leslie, Stuart. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. 1993. 
Lowen, Rebecca. Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford. 1997.

Noble, David. America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. 1977.

——— Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. 1984.

Owens, Larry. “MIT and the Federal ‘Angel.’” in Isis 81 (1990).

Schweber, Sam. “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the United States, 1920-1950.” in HSPBS 17 (1986).

——— “Big Science in Context: Cornell and MIT.” in Big Science. 1992.

Servos, John. “The Industrial Relations of Science: Chemical Engineering at MIT, 1900-1939.” in Isis 71 (1980).

——— “The Knowledge Corporation: A. A. Noyes and Chemistry at Caltech, 1915-1930.” in Ambix 23 (1976).

Veysey, Laurence. The Emergence of the American University. 1965.