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This volume, occasioned by the centenary of the Fritz Haber Institute, formerly the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, covers the institute's scientific and institutional history from its founding until the present. The institute was among the earliest established by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and its inauguration was one of the first steps in the development of Berlin-Dahlem into a center for scientific research. Its establishment was made possible by an endowment from Leopold Koppel, granted on the condition that Fritz Haber, well-known for his discovery of a method to synthesize ammonia from its elements, be made its director. The history of the institute has largely ...
This book offers a history of the instrumentation used to materialize the early thought experiments devised in the Einstein-Bohr disputes over the foundations of quantum mechanics. It shows how the second world war and cold war fostered the development of materials, instruments, and systems that made it possible to create, manipulate, and detect single quantum systems, thus creating the material conditions for experiments in foundations of quantum mechanics and for a broad spectrum of experimental inquiries on the structure and properties of matter which underlay the creation of new research fields such as quantum optics, quantum information, and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Discussing research and development performed in diverse contexts, this book reveals how physicists carried instruments, and the knowledge they embodied, through disciplinary and geographic frontiers to probe entanglement, a most intriguing feature of the quantum world.
Hermann Kopp (1817–1892) is best remembered today as a historian of chemistry, but during his lifetime he was one of the most eminent chemists of his day, and one of the earliest pioneers of physical chemistry. Late in his career he wrote an endearing fantasy about personified molecules. Published in 1882, Aus der Molecular-Welt (From the Molecular World) portrayed the intimate details of what might actually be happening in the sub-microscopic world; the atoms and molecules we meet there have agency, personalities, sometimes even dialog. Filled with appealing tropes, humor, and whimsical asides, Kopp’s short book provided an examination of the chemistry and physics of his day that was always light-hearted on the surface, but often surprisingly profound. Properly interpreted, the book provides a revealing tour of nineteenth-century debates concerning chemical theory. It is here translated into English, richly annotated, and equipped with an illuminating preface by a leading historian of chemistry. It provides entertaining reading to practicing chemists, as well as new insights to historians of science.
This book provides new and critical perspectives on the internal development of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (the PCSWA; Pugwash) and its role in international nuclear diplomacy during the 1960s Cold War. Conceived by western scientists dissenting from their own government’s position on nuclear weapons, the conferences brought together elite scientists from across the East-West divide to work towards nuclear disarmament and for peace. The analysis follows two lines. First, the book charts the emergence during the conferences of a distinctive form of technopolitical communication that was crucial to the role of Pugwash in Informal cross-bloc dialogue about disarmamen...
English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that ...
This book provides the first comprehensive historical account of the evolution of scientific traditions in astronomy, astrophysics, and the space sciences within the Max Planck Society. Structured with in-depth archival research, interviews with protagonists, unpublished photographs, and an extensive bibliography, it follows a unique history: from the post-war relaunch of physical sciences in West Germany, to the spectacular developments and successes of cosmic sciences in the second half of the 20th century, up to the emergence of multi-messenger astronomy. It reveals how the Society acquired national and international acclaim in becoming one of the world’s most productive research organizations in these fields.
In twentieth-century Germany, Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer rose to prominence as a brilliant physical chemist, even as several of his relatives—Dietrich Bonhoeffer among them—became involved in the resistance to Hitler, leading to their executions. This book traces the entanglement of science, religion, and politics in the Third Reich and in the lives of Karl-Friedrich, his family and his colleagues, including Fritz Haber and Werner Heisenberg. Nominated for the Nobel Prize, Karl-Friedrich was an expert on heavy water, a component of the atomic bomb. During the war, he was caught in the middle between relatives who were trying to kill Hitler and friends who were helping Hitler build a nuclear weapon. Karl-Friedrich emerges as a complex figure—an agnostic whose brother was a renowned theologian, and a chemist who both reluctantly advised German nuclear scientists and collaborated with Paul Rosbaud, a spy for the British. Illuminating the uneasy position of science in twentieth-century Germany, The Scientific World of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer is the story of a man in love with chemistry, his family, and his nation, trying to do right by all of them in the midst of chaos.
This lively chronicle of the years 1847–1947—the century when the Jewish people changed how we see the world—is “[a] thrilling and tragic history…especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a people and a past” (The Wall Street Journal). In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known—Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car. Without R...