Synopses & Reviews
At the end of the nineteenth century, some physicists believed that the basic principles underlying their subject were already known, and that physics in the future would only consist of filling in the details. They could hardly have been more wrong. The past century has seen the rise of quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, particle physics, and solid-state physics, among other fields. These subjects have fundamentally changed our understanding of space, time, and matter. They have also transformed daily life, inspiring a technological revolution that has included the development of radio, television, lasers, nuclear power, and computers. In Quantum Generations, Helge Kragh, one of the world's leading historians of physics, presents a sweeping account of these extraordinary achievements of the past one hundred years.
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. Unlike most previous histories of physics, written either from a scientific perspective or from a social and institutional perspective, Quantum Generations combines both approaches. 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 skillfully 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.
Combining a mastery of detail with a sure sense of the broad contours of historical change, Kragh has written a fitting tribute to the scientists who have played such a decisive role in the making of the modern world.
Review
"An ambitious one-volume history: the first comprehensive textbook to address most of the significant aspects in the intellectual history of 20th-century physics. Kragh's achievement . . . is quite remarkable. . . . For physicists who want to 'humanize' their courses, or brush up on their professional past, for those who teach the history of modern science, and for anyone fascinated with physics, I can recommend this book as an indispensable resource."--Diana Barkan, Physics World
Review
A readable and enormously valuable book. . . . -- Graham Farmelo, Nature An ambitious one-volume history: the first comprehensive textbook to address most of the significant aspects in the intellectual history of 20th-century physics. Kragh's achievement . . . is quite remarkable. . . . For physicists who want to 'humanize' their courses, or brush up on their professional past, for those who teach the history of modern science, and for anyone fascinated with physics, I can recommend this book as an indispensable resource. -- Diana Barkan, Physics World Neither a specialized academic work nor a mere popularization, Kragh's tome [is a] synthetic, deeply detailed and carefully explained survey. . . An impressive reference work, and a serious award-winning read. -- Publisher's Weekly A sweeping survey of the development of modern physics . . . wide-ranging, studiously researched, and comprehensive. -- The Economist Within a century we've seen the rise of new physics, which has, however haltingly, at last begun to answer the big questions. . . . Taken together, they're an embarrassment of riches, and Kragh has had to pare the story down severely. But he's equal to the task, and manages to cover the pantheon of 20th-century physics. . . . -- New Scientist It is a thrilling story, full of excitement, danger, surprise and beauty, and it is told with lucidity and scholarship by Helge Kragh. What he gives us in this absorbing account is the story of what could be mankind's greatest intellectual adventure to date. -- Financial Times Kragh does an exceptional job of trying to cover in a single volume one of the most prolific sciences of this century. . . . -- Library Journal Compared with the popular interest books on physics . . . Kragh presents appreciably more technical detail, and his estimable overview will appeal better to the active physics student. -- Booklist A fine new study. . . . Mr. Kragh manages to cover this vast canvas in less than 500 pages, leaving very little of importance out. It is amazing how concise one can be if once knows what one is talking about. -- Jeremy Bernstein, Washington Times An excellent guide to the historical literature on almost any subject in the history of twentieth-century physics. -- Laurie M. Brown, Physics Today Missing until now has been a relatively short, readable book that synthesizes the extensive research by historians of modern physics, to give an accurate guide to the new physics and the complex plaths by which it was developed. Quantum Generations does all this, and more . . . It is hard to think of anyone better qualified to write this book. -- Stephen G. Brush, American Journal of Physics A superb account of the last hundred years of physics. . . . I very much doubt we will see a comparable history of twentieth century physics for years to come. This is a magnificent work of synthesis that cannot be too highly commended for its balance, coverage, and clarity. -- Xavier Roque, Centaurus This is very good scientific history and in some measure philosophy written by someone who has an understanding of the process of scientific work. The writing is clear and largely non-technical. Although the focus is cosmology, the book will appeal to anyone with an interest in how science actually works, whether it is through the history of the philosophy. -- D.R. Matravers, Contemporary Physics This book is a very ambitious and largely successful attempt to provide a one-volume history of twentieth-century physics. It is a Herculean task, and Helge Kragh is well aware of the problems and pitfalls. . . . Incredibly enough, Kragh . . . [gives] both a fair assessment of most of the major themes in this most busy and creative of centuries, and yet at the same time giving summaries of the major research developments within each of the major fields. This is no mean feat, and in fact it is a rather amazing one, so that we have here, in one volume, a wide-ranging view of many of the outstanding accomplishments of this century in physics. -- Daniel M. Greenberger, ISIS
Review
"A readable and enormously valuable book."--Graham Farmelo, Nature
Review
"Neither a specialized academic work nor a mere popularization, Kragh's tome [is a] synthetic, deeply detailed and carefully explained survey. . . An impressive reference work, and a serious award-winning read."--Publisher's Weekly
Review
"A sweeping survey of the development of modern physics . . . wide-ranging, studiously researched, and comprehensive."--The Economist
Review
"Within a century we've seen the rise of new physics, which has, however haltingly, at last begun to answer the big questions. . . . Taken together, they're an embarrassment of riches, and Kragh has had to pare the story down severely. But he's equal to the task, and manages to cover the pantheon of 20th-century physics."--New Scientist
Review
"It is a thrilling story, full of excitement, danger, surprise and beauty, and it is told with lucidity and scholarship by Helge Kragh. What he gives us in this absorbing account is the story of what could be mankind's greatest intellectual adventure to date."--Financial Times
Review
"Kragh does an exceptional job of trying to cover in a single volume one of the most prolific sciences of this century."--Library Journal
Review
"Compared with the popular interest books on physics . . . Kragh presents appreciably more technical detail, and his estimable overview will appeal better to the active physics student."--Booklist
Review
"A fine new study. . . . Mr. Kragh manages to cover this vast canvas in less than 500 pages, leaving very little of importance out. It is amazing how concise one can be if once knows what one is talking about."--Jeremy Bernstein, Washington Times
Review
An excellent guide to the historical literature on almost any subject in the history of twentieth-century physics. Jeremy Bernstein - Washington Times
Review
Missing until now has been a relatively short, readable book that synthesizes the extensive research by historians of modern physics, to give an accurate guide to the new physics and the complex plaths by which it was developed. Quantum Generations does all this, and more . . . It is hard to think of anyone better qualified to write this book. Laurie M. Brown - Physics Today
Review
A superb account of the last hundred years of physics. . . . I very much doubt we will see a comparable history of twentieth century physics for years to come. This is a magnificent work of synthesis that cannot be too highly commended for its balance, coverage, and clarity. Stephen G. Brush - American Journal of Physics
Review
This is very good scientific history and in some measure philosophy written by someone who has an understanding of the process of scientific work. The writing is clear and largely non-technical. Although the focus is cosmology, the book will appeal to anyone with an interest in how science actually works, whether it is through the history of the philosophy. Xavier Roque - Centaurus
Review
This book is a very ambitious and largely successful attempt to provide a one-volume history of twentieth-century physics. It is a Herculean task, and Helge Kragh is well aware of the problems and pitfalls. . . . Incredibly enough, Kragh . . . [gives] both a fair assessment of most of the major themes in this most busy and creative of centuries, and yet at the same time giving summaries of the major research developments within each of the major fields. This is no mean feat, and in fact it is a rather amazing one, so that we have here, in one volume, a wide-ranging view of many of the outstanding accomplishments of this century in physics. D.R. Matravers - Contemporary Physics
Synopsis
At the end of the nineteenth century, some physicists believed that the basic principles underlying their subject were already known, and that physics in the future would only consist of filling in the details. They could hardly have been more wrong. The past century has seen the rise of quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, particle physics, and solid-state physics, among other fields. These subjects have fundamentally changed our understanding of space, time, and matter. They have also transformed daily life, inspiring a technological revolution that has included the development of radio, television, lasers, nuclear power, and computers. In
Quantum Generations, Helge Kragh, one of the world's leading historians of physics, presents a sweeping account of these extraordinary achievements of the past one hundred years.
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. Unlike most previous histories of physics, written either from a scientific perspective or from a social and institutional perspective, Quantum Generations combines both approaches. 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 skillfully 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.
Combining a mastery of detail with a sure sense of the broad contours of historical change, Kragh has written a fitting tribute to the scientists who have played such a decisive role in the making of the modern world.
Synopsis
"Helge Kragh's book is a magnificent achievement. It is a rich, erudite history of physics from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth that is also informative and insightful about social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts. Kragh has included developments at the physics-applied physics-technology interface and has thus given an unusually comprehensive and balanced account of twentieth-century physics. What is equally impressive is that the book is readily accessible to the general reader and will also be valued by scientists and historians."
--S.S. Schweber, author of QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga"This book will come to be seen as an indispensable reference for those who seek a full understanding of its topic--which, of course, is one of the most important topics in modern history."--Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics
"Kragh has succeeded in presenting an engaging and comprehensive history of the development of physics in this century, one that will be accessible to a wide audience. This book will surely become a standard reference for students of twentieth-century science."--Ronald Anderson, Boston College
Synopsis
"Helge Kragh's book is a magnificent achievement. It is a rich, erudite history of physics from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth that is also informative and insightful about social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts. Kragh has included developments at the physics-applied physics-technology interface and has thus given an unusually comprehensive and balanced account of twentieth-century physics. What is equally impressive is that the book is readily accessible to the general reader and will also be valued by scientists and historians."--S.S. Schweber, author of QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga
"This book will come to be seen as an indispensable reference for those who seek a full understanding of its topic--which, of course, is one of the most important topics in modern history."--Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics
"Kragh has succeeded in presenting an engaging and comprehensive history of the development of physics in this century, one that will be accessible to a wide audience. This book will surely become a standard reference for students of twentieth-century science."--Ronald Anderson, Boston College
Synopsis
At the end of the nineteenth century, some physicists believed that the basic principles underlying their subject were already known, and that physics in the future would only consist of filling in the details. They could hardly have been more wrong. The past century has seen the rise of quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, particle physics, and solid-state physics, among other fields. These subjects have fundamentally changed our understanding of space, time, and matter. They have also transformed daily life, inspiring a technological revolution that has included the development of radio, television, lasers, nuclear power, and computers. In
Quantum Generations, Helge Kragh, one of the world's leading historians of physics, presents a sweeping account of these extraordinary achievements of the past one hundred years.
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. Unlike most previous histories of physics, written either from a scientific perspective or from a social and institutional perspective, Quantum Generations combines both approaches. 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 skillfully 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.
Combining a mastery of detail with a sure sense of the broad contours of historical change, Kragh has written a fitting tribute to the scientists who have played such a decisive role in the making of the modern world.
Synopsis
"Helge Kragh's book is a magnificent achievement. It is a rich, erudite history of physics from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth that is also informative and insightful about social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts. Kragh has included developments at the physics-applied physics-technology interface and has thus given an unusually comprehensive and balanced account of twentieth-century physics. What is equally impressive is that the book is readily accessible to the general reader and will also be valued by scientists and historians."--S.S. Schweber, author of
QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga"This book will come to be seen as an indispensable reference for those who seek a full understanding of its topic--which, of course, is one of the most important topics in modern history."--Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics
"Kragh has succeeded in presenting an engaging and comprehensive history of the development of physics in this century, one that will be accessible to a wide audience. This book will surely become a standard reference for students of twentieth-century science."--Ronald Anderson, Boston College
About the Author
Helge Kragh is Professor of History of Science at Aarhus University, Denmark. His previous books include An Introduction to the Historiography of Science, Dirac: A Scientific Biography, and Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (Princeton).
Table of Contents
Preface xi
PART ONE: FROM CONSOLIDATION TO REVOLUTION 1
CHAPTER ONE Fin-de-Siecle Physics: A World Picture in Flux 3
CHAPTER TWO The World of Physics 13
Personnel and Resources 13
Physics Journals 19
A Japanese Look at European Physics 22
CHAPTER THREE Discharges in Gases and What Followed 27
A New Kind of Rays 28
From Becquerel Rays to Radioactivity 30
Spurious Rays, More or Less 34
The Electron before Thomson 38
The First Elementary Particle 40
CHAPTER FOUR Atomic Architecture 44
The Thomson Atom 44
Other Early Atomic Models 48
Rutherford's Nuclear Atom 51
A Quantum Theory of Atomic Structure 53
CHAPTER FIVE The Slow Rise of Quantum Theory 58
The Law of Blackbody Radiation 58
Early Discussions of the Quantum Hypothesis 63
Einstein and the Photon 66
Specific Heats and the Status of Quantum Theory by 1913 68
CHAPTER SIX Physics at Low Temperatures 74
The Race Toward Zero 74
Kammerlingh Onnes and the Leiden Laboratory 76
Superconductivity 80
CHAPTER SEVEN Einstein's Relativity, and Others' 87
The Lorentz Transformations 87
Einsteinian Relativity 90
From Special to General Relativity 93
Reception 98
CHAPTER EIGHT A Revolution that Failed 105
The Concept of Electromagnetic Mass 105
Electron Theory as a Worldview 108
Mass Variation Experiments 111
Decline of a Worldview 114
Unified Field Theories 116
CHAPTER NINE Physics in Industry and War 120
Industrial Physics 120
Electrons at Work, I. Long-Distance Telephony 123
Electrons at Work, II: Vacuum Tubes 126
Physics in the Chemists' War 130
PART TWO: FROM REVOLUTION TO CONSOLIDATION 137
CHAPTER TEN Science and Politics in the Weimar Republic 139
Science Policy and Financial Support 139
International Relations 143
The Physics Community 148
Zeitgeist and the Physical Worldview 151
CHAPTER ELEVEN Quantum Jumps 155
Quantum Anomalies 155
Heisenberg'S Quantum Mechanics 161
Schrodinger's Equation 163
Dissemination and Receptions 168
CHAPTER TWELVE The Rise of Nuclear Physics 174
The Electron-Proton Model 174
Quantum Mechanics and the Nucleus 177
Astrophysical Applications 182
1932, Annus Mirabilis 184
CHAPTER THIRTEEN From Two to Many Particles 190
Antiparticles 190
Surprises from the Cosmic Radiation 193
Crisis in Quantum Theory 196
Yukawas Heavy Quantum 201
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Philosophical Implications of Quantum Mechanics 206
Uncertainty and Complementarity 206
Against the Copenhagen Interpretation 212
Is Quantum Mechanics Complete? 215
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Eddington's Dream and Other Heterodoxies 218
Eddington's Fundamentalism 218
Cosmonumerology and Other Speculations 221
Milne and Cosmophysics 223
The Modem Aristotelians 226
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Physics and the New Dictatorships 230
In the Shadow of the Swastika 230
Aryan Physics 236
Physics in Mussolini's Italy 238
Physics, Dialectical Materialism, and Stalinism 240
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Brain Drain and Brain Gain 245
American Physics in the 1930s 245
Intellectual Migrations 249
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN From Uranium Puzzle to Hiroshima 257
The Road to Fission 257
More than Moonshine 261
Toward the Bomb 265
The Death of Two Cities 269
PART THREE: PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS 277
CHAPTER NINETEEN Nuclear Themes 279
Physics of Atomic Nuclei 279
Modem Alchemy 283
Hopes and Perils of Nuclear Energy 285
Controlled Fusion Energy 290
CHAPTER TWENTY Militarization and Megatrends 293
Physics-A Branch of the Military? 295
Big Machines 302
A European Big Science Adventure 308
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Particle Discoveries 312
Mainly Mesons 312
Weak Interactions 317
Quarks 321
The Growth of Particle Physics 325
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Fundamental Theories 332
The Ups and Downs of Field Theory 336
Gauge Fields and Electroweak Unification 339
Quantum Chromodynamics 344
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Cosmology and the Renaissance of Relativity 349
Toward the Big Bang Universe 349
The Steady State Challenge 354
Cosmology after 1960 357
The Renaissance of General Relativity 361
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Elements of Solid State Physics 366
The Solid State Before 1940 366
Semiconductors and the Rise of the Solid State Community 370
Breakthroughs in Superconductivity 375
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Engineering Physics and Quantum Electronics 382
It Started with the Transistor 382
Microwaves, the Laser and Quantum Optics 386
Optical Fibers 391
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Science under Attack--Physics in Crisis? 394
Signs of Crisis 394
A Revolt against Science 401
The End of Physics? 405
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Unifications and Speculations 409
The Problem of Unity 409
Grand Unified Theories 411
Superstring Theory 415
Quantum Cosmology 419
PART FOUR: A LOOK BACK 425
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Nobel Physics 427
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE A Century of Physics in Retrospect 440
Growth and Progress 440
Physics and the Other Sciences 444
Conservative Revolutions 447
APPENDIX Further Reading 453
Bibliography 461
Index 481