Quantum generations : a history of physics in the twentieth century
"The first comprehensive one-volume history of twentieth-century physics, the book takes us from the discovery of x-rays in the mid-1890s to superstring theory in the 1990s. Kragh writes about pure science with the expertise of a trained physicist, while keeping the content accessible to nonspecialists and paying careful attention to practical uses of science, ranging from compact disks to bombs. As a historian, Kragh outlines the social and economic contexts that have shaped the field in the twentieth century. He writes, for example, about the impact of the two world wars, the fate of physics under Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, the role of military research, the emerging leadership of the United States, and the backlash against science that began in the 1960s. He also shows how the revolutionary discoveries of scientists ranging from Einstein, Planck, and Bohr to Stephen Hawking have been built on the great traditions of earlier centuries."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©1999
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., ©1999
History
xiv, 494 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780691012063, 9780691095523, 0691012067, 0691095523
40734901
pt. 1. From consolidation to revolution. 1. Fin-de-siècle physics: a world picture in flux
2. The world of physics : Personnel and resources ; Physics journals ; A Japanese look at European physics
3. Discharges in gases and what followed : A new kind of rays ; From Becquerel rays to radioactivity ; Spurious rays, more or less ; The electron before Thomson ; The first elementary particle
4. Atomic architecture : The Thomson atom ; Other early atomic models ; Rutherford's nuclear atom ; A quantum theory of atomic structure
5. The slow rise of quantum theory : The law of blackbody radiation ; Early discussions of the quantum hypothesis ; Einstein and the photon ; Specific heats and the status of quantum theory by 1913
6. Physics at low temperatures : The race toward zero ; Kammerlingh Onnes and the Leiden Laboratory ; Superconductivity
7. Einstein's relativity, and others' : The Lorentz transformations ; Einsteinian relativity ; From special to general relativity ; Reception
8. A revolution that failed : The concept of electromagnetic mass ; Electron theory as a workflow ; Mass variation experiments ; Decline of a worldview ; Unified field theories
9. Physics in industry and war : Industrial physics ; Electrons at work, I: long-distance telephony ; Electrons at work, II: vacuum tubes ; Physics in the chemists' war. pt. 2. From revolution to consolidation. 10. Science and politics in the Weimar republic : Science policy and financial support ; International relations ; The physics community ; Zeitgeist and the physical worldview
11. Quantum jumps : Quantum anomalies ; Heisenberg's quantum mechanics ; Schrödinger's equation ; Dissemination and receptions
12. The rise of nuclear physics : The electron-proton model ; Quantum mechanics and the nucleus ; Astrophysical applications ; 1932, annus mirabilis
13. From two to many particles : Antiparticles ; Surprises from the cosmic radiation ; Crisis in quantum theory ; Yukawa's heavy quantum
14. Philosophical implications of quantum mechanics : Uncertainty and complementarity ; Against the Copenhagen interpretation ; Is quantum mechanics complete?
15. Eddington's dream and other heterodoxies : Eddington's fundamentalism ; Cosmonumerology and other speculations ; Milne and cosmophysics ; The modern Aristotelians
16. Physics and the new dictatorships : In the shadow of the swastika ; Aryan physics ; Physics in Mussolini's Italy ; Physics, dialectical materialism, and Stalinism
17. Brain drain and brain gain : American physics in the 1930s ; Intellectual migrations
18. From uranium puzzles to Hiroshima : The road to fission ; More than moonshine ; Toward the bomb ; The death of two cities. pt. 3. Progress and problems. 19. Nuclear themes : Physics of atomic nuclei ; Modern alchemy ; Hopes and perils of nuclear energy
20. Militarization and megatrends : Physics, a branch of the military? ; Big machines ; A European big science adventure
21. Particle discoveries : Mainly mesons ; Weak interactions ; Quarks ; The growth of particle physics
22. Fundamental theories : QED ; The ups and downs of field theory ; Gauge fields and electroweak unification ; Quantum chromodynamics
23. Cosmology and the renaissance of relativity : Toward the big bang universe ; The steady state challenge ; Cosmology after 1960 ; The Renaissance of general relativity
24. Elements of solid state physics : The solid state before 1940 ; Semiconductors and the rise of the solid state community ; Breakthroughs in superconductivity
25. Engineering physics and quantum electronics : It started with the transistor ; Microwaves, the laser, and quantum optics ; Optical fibers
26. Science under attack, physics in crisis? : Signs of crisis ; A revolt against science ; The end of physics?
27. Unifications and speculations : The problem of unity ; Grand unified theories ; Superstring theory ; Quantum cosmology. pt. 4. A look back. 28. Nobel physics
29. A century of physics in retrospect : Growth and progress ; Physics and the other sciences ; Conservative revolutions
Appendix. Further reading