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This volume presents a selection of contributions by Russian scholars - historians and philosophers to science - to the Einstein Studies industry, broadly construed. This work explores the historical and foundational issues in general relativity and relativistic cosmology, Einstein's contributions to early quantum mechanics and the rise of Dirac's quantum electrodynamics. It also includes a detailed description of the physics colloquium Einstein established and coordinated in 1912-1913 and comments on his brief interest in the construction of the plane wing in 1916. most scholars. Materials from various Russian archives shed new light on the famous exchange (regarding the first evolutionary ...
This book is a historical analysis of the quantum mechanical revolution and the emergence of a new discipline from the perspective, not of a professor, but of a recent or actual Ph.D. student just embarking on an uncertain academic career in economically hard times. Quantum mechanics exploded on to the intellectual scene between 1925 and 1927, with more than 200 publications across the world, the majority of them authored by young scientists under the age of 30, graduate students or postdoctoral fellows. The resulting theory was a collective product that no single authority could claim, but it had a major geographical nod – the Copenhagen Institute of Theoretical Physics – where most of ...
A major new contribution to understanding the transition of Soviet society from Stalinism to a more humane model of socialism.
By tracing the English word permafrost back to its Russian roots, this unique intellectual history uncovers the multiple, contested meanings of permafrost as a scientific idea and environmental phenomenon.
Questions traditional explanations for Jewish excellence in science in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Palestine in the twentieth century. Scholars have struggled for decades to explain why Jews have succeeded extravagantly in modern science. A variety of controversial theories—from such intellects as C. P. Snow, Norbert Wiener, and Nathaniel Weyl—have been promoted. Snow hypothesized an evolved genetic predisposition to scientific success. Wiener suggested that the breeding habits of Jews sustained hereditary qualities conducive for learning. Economist and eugenicist Weyl attributed Jewish intellectual eminence to "seventeen centuries of breeding for scholars." Rejecting the id...
This is the second of two volumes on the genesis of quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the 20th century. It covers the period 1923-1927. After covering some of the difficulties the old quantum theory had run into by the early 1920s as well as the discovery of the exclusion principle and electron spin, it traces the emergence of two forms of the new quantum mechanics, matrix mechanics and wave mechanics, in the years 1923-27. It then shows how the new theory took care of some of the failures of the old theory and put its successes on a more solid basis. Finally, it shows how in 1927 the two forms of the new theory were unified, first through statistical transformation theory, then thro...
The term “crisis,” with its complex history, has emerged as one of the pivotal notions of political modernity. As such, reconstructing the ways the discourse of crisis functioned in various contexts and historical moments gives us a unique insight not only into a series of conceptual transformations, but also into the underlying logic of key political and intellectual controversies of the last two centuries. Studying the ways crisis was experienced, conceptualized, and negotiated can contribute to the understanding of how various visions of time and history shape political thinking and, conversely, how political and social reconfigurations frame our assumptions about temporality and spat...
This book represents a first considered attempt to study the factors that conditioned industrial chemistry for war in 1914-18. Taking a comparative perspective, it reflects on the experience of France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Britain, Italy and Russia, and points to significant similarities and differences. It looks at changing patterns in the organisation of industry, and at the emerging symbiosis between science, industry and the military.
This monograph provides a concise introduction to the tangled issues of communication between Russian and Western scientists during the Cold War. It details the extent to which mid-twentieth-century researchers and practitioners were able to communicate with their counterparts on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. Drawing upon evidence from a range of disciplines, a decade-by-decade account is first given of the varying levels of contact that existed via private correspondence and conference attendance. Next, the book examines the exchange of publications and the availability of one side's work in the libraries of the other. It then goes on to compare general language abilities on opposi...
The original essays included here, by up and coming scholars in the field, illustrate the potential and diversity of post-foundational ideas as applied to comparative education concerns.