Customer Reviews

The World of Physics: A Small Library of the Literature of Physics from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 2: The Einstein Universe and the Bohr Atom

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In three volumes, Weaver provides a history of physics from the beginnings of philosophy and observation, through the development of the scientific method, to the modern era, with details of many significant contributions along the way.

Weaver's method is to provide anecdotal biographical information for a particular philosopher or physicist, followed by excerpts of that contributer's original work. Insights into personalities, the study of the sciences, and the historic and social context for these contributions, are presented very naturally.

Eighty-one contributions are described in volume II alone. Some of those are the Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, Enrico Fermi, Henri Poincare, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Georg Riemann, Ernst Mach, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, ... (You get the idea -- )

While it is possible to criticize the brevity of the entries or the particular perspective which is provided, nevertheless there simply is no other easily accessible overview such as this one. Very nicely done -- a gem.