A lively collection of Einstein’s groundbreaking scientific correspondence on modern physics Imagine getting four of the greatest minds of modern physics in a room together to explain and debate the theories and innovations of their day. This is the fascinating experience of reading Letters on Wave Mechanics, the correspondence between H. A. Lorentz, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein. These remarkable letters illuminate not only the basis of Schrödinger’s work in wave mechanics, but also how great scientific minds debated and challenged the ever-changing theories of the day and ultimately embraced an elegant solution to the riddles of quantum theory. Their collected correspondence offers insight into both the personalities and professional aspirations that played a part in this theoretical breakthrough. This authorized ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A lively collection of Einstein's groundbreaking scientific correspondence on modern physics with Schrödinger, Planck, and Lorentz Imagine getting four of the greatest minds of modern physics in a room together to explain and debate the theories and innovations of their day. This is the fascinating experience of reading Letters on Wave Mechanics, the correspondence between Erwin Schrödinger and Max Planck, H.A. Lorentz, and Albert Einstein. These remarkable letters illuminate not only the basis of Schrödinger's work in wave mechanics, but also how great scientific minds debated and challenged the ever-changing theories of the day and ultimately embraced an elegant solution to the riddles of quantum theory. Their collected correspondence offers insight into both the personalities and professional aspirations that played a part in this theoretical breakthrough. This authorized Philosophical Library ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The famous equation that bears Erwin Schrödinger's name encapsulates his profound contributions to quantum mechanics using wave mechanics. This third, augmented edition of his papers on the topic contains the six original, famous papers in which Schrödinger created and developed the subject of wave mechanics as published in the original edition. As the author points out, at the time each paper was written the results of the later papers were largely unknown to him. This edition also contains three papers that were written shortly after the original edition was published and four lectures delivered by Schrödinger at the Royal Institution in London in 1928. The papers and lectures in this volume were revised by the author and translated into English, and afford the reader a striking and valuable insight into how wave mechanics developed.

Historically, the scientific method has been said to require proposing a theory, making a prediction of something not already known, testing the prediction, and giving up the theory (or substantially changing it) if it fails the test. A theory that leads to several successful predictions is more likely to be accepted than one that only explains what is already known but not understood. This process is widely treated as the conventional method of achieving scientific progress, and was used throughout the twentieth century as the standard route to discovery and experimentation. But does science really work this way? In Making 20th Century Science, Stephen G. Brush discusses this question, as it relates to the development of science throughout the last century. Answering this question requires both a philosophically and historically scientific approach, and Brush blends the two in order to take a close look at how scientific methodology has developed. Several cases from the history of modern physical and biological science are examined, including Mendeleev's Periodic Law, Kekule's structure for benzene, the light-quantum hypothesis, quantum mechanics, chromosome theory, and natural selection. In general it is found that theories are accepted for a combination of successful predictions and better explanations of old facts. Making 20th Century Science is a large-scale historical look at the implementation of the scientific method, and how scientific theories come to be accepted.

“A highly readable account . . . tracing the future Nobel laureate through his formative years and up to the eve of World War II” (The Wall Street Journal). On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle. As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve. Bethe’s emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created. Praise for Nuclear Forces “Schweber’s account of Hans Bethe’s life . . . reveals the origins of a charismatic scientist, grounded in the importance of his parents and his Jewish roots . . . [Schweber] recreates the social world that shaped the character of the last of the memorable young scientists who established the field of quantum mechanics.” —Publishers Weekly “Nuclear Forces is a carefully researched, historically and biographically insightful account of the development of a profession and of one of its leading representatives during a century in which physics and physicists played key roles in scientific, cultural, political, and military developments.” —David C. Cassidy, author of A Short History of Physics in the American Century