Physics in Perspective最新文献

In this paper, we analyze in a quantitative manner the changing position of Physical Review in the global field of physics, compared to other important physics journals, since the beginning of the twentieth century. This approach complements existing intellectual and institutional accounts of Physical Review’s historical evolution and offers a dynamical portrait of the global landscape of physics journals, based on a bibliometric analysis of the relations between journals obtained through co-citation analysis. The co-citation networks constructed for successive twenty-year periods provide a measure of the rising position of Physical Review from the periphery to the center of physics. The intellectual content of the journal, with its evolving topics and most influential authors, is also analyzed using the bibliographical references contained in all its articles.

Since the late-nineteenth century, scientists have been labeled with disciplinary fields and scientific achievements have been identified largely with heroic individuals. Reward systems such as the highly visible Nobel Prizes have reinforced such a view of science. This paper examines long-term trends in Nobel Physics awards since 1901 and asks whether the awards have registered the increasing specialization, collaboration, and transdisciplinary research that mark the course of modern physics. A second major question is the extent to which, in turn, histories of physics since the 1960s have reflected trends in physics or in Nobel recognition. Historians of physics appear to have favored accounts of particle physics and relativity theory over other areas of physics, with biography remaining a strong tradition in the history of physics, even while institutional and social history has become significant. Concluding remarks address hierarchies of prestige in science, the accessible and emotional appeal of heroic and revolutionary accounts of science, and the perennial appeal of fundamental questions, like reductionism and emergence.

The famous nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who defected to the USSR in 1950, was affiliated to the internationalist network called “Partisans of Peace,” founded in 1949. Later renamed the World Peace Council, it was an organization of pacifist scientists, intellectuals, and artists like Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Pablo Picasso that was similar to the Pugwash movement, but part of the Comintern (later Cominform). As noted by Albert Einstein, the Partisans of Peace were “pacifist” in a very particular sense: they strongly criticized Western nuclear policies, but they justified the Soviet atomic programme as inevitable response to them. At the same time, physicists who joined the 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto like Joseph Rotblat and Norbert Wiener, or the 1957 G?ttingen Declaration like Otto Hahn and Max Born, were suspicious about the 1955 “Atoms for Peace” program, sponsored by the United States to balance the Soviet influence in Europe as well as in non-aligned countries. I will discuss these different—and partially overlapping—scientific-cooperation networks built in the name of “peace” during the hottest years of the Cold War, when peace itself had become an ideological weapon in the hands of a militarized science.

Lay people have a large appetite for information about scientific and technological issues that affect them, such as self-driving automobiles, gene manipulation, and climate change. However, this information must be clear and accurate if they are to use it to make informed political decisions. In 1994, the Nobel prize–winning physicist Philip W. Anderson used a newspaper essay to convey his concerns about the fidelity of the communication channels that connect the public to the creators of technical knowledge. He also suggested strategies to improve the quality of that communication. We analyze that essay and other writings by Anderson to identify the origins of his concerns and to place them in the larger context of his scientific philosophy.

It is well known that, following the emergence of the first evidence for an expanding universe, Albert Einstein banished the cosmological constant term from his cosmology. Indeed, he is reputed to have labelled the term, originally introduced to the field equations of general relativity in 1917 in order to predict a static universe, his “biggest blunder.” However, serious doubts about this reported statement have been raised in recent years. We interrogate the legend of Einstein’s “biggest blunder” statement in the context of our recent studies of Einstein’s cosmology in his later years. We find that the remark is highly compatible with Einstein’s cosmic models of the 1930s, with his later writings on cosmology, and with independent reports by at least three physicists. We conclude that there is little doubt that Einstein came to view the introduction of the cosmological constant term as a serious error and that he very likely labelled the term his “biggest blunder” on at least one occasion. This finding may be of some relevance for those theoreticians today who seek to describe the recently discovered acceleration in cosmic expansion without the use of a cosmological constant term.

This article, the second in a series about the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), traces his education from his arrival in Moscow in 1731 to study at the Slavic-Greco-Latin Academy, through his admission to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1736, to his trip abroad to complete his educational studies from 1736 to 1741. Lomonosov’s story during this time opens a vista on the introduction of modern physics and modern science into Russia. Michael D. Gordin has argued that Peter the Great’s plans to Westernize Russia were more broadly conceived than he is usually credited, with ambitions that exceeded mere utilitarian and pragmatic goals. Lomonosov’s career trajectory is a good example, illustrating how different aspects of the Petrine vision intersected with and reinforced each other. The article ends with Lomonosov’s return to Russia from Germany in 1741, an important landmark in the growth of the Academy and of Russian science.

Maxwell’s celebrated electromagnetic theory of light dates from 1865. Two years later, without appealing to the ether as a carrier of light waves, the Danish physicist Ludvig Lorenz (1829–1891) independently published another electrical theory of light based on optical equations and the novel idea of retarded potentials. In spite of resting on a very different conceptual foundation, Lorenz’s theory led to almost the same results as Maxwell’s. But whereas Maxwell’s field theory heralded a revolution in physics, Lorenz’s alternative was largely forgotten and soon relegated to a footnote in the history of physics. In part based on archival material and other sources in Danish, this paper offers a detailed contextual account of Lorentz’s theory and its reception in the physics community. Moreover, it includes a brief introduction to other of Lorenz’s scientific contributions and discusses the reasons why his electrical theory of light failed to attract serious interest.