History

In this 1989 volume the Australian Academy of Science celebrates and assesses two centuries of Australian science. Authors with different fields of interest present a group of general surveys and case studies on the development of scientific...

This case study examines the interrelationship between mathematics and physics in the work of one of the major figures of the Scientific Revolution: the Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, Christian Huygens (1629-1695). Joella Yoder details...

Sir Roderick Murchison (1792-1871) was a giant of the imperial age. His career was tied intimately to the expansion of the political, economic and scientific realm of the British Empire. A founding father of geological science and geographical...

History, Humanity and Evolution brings together thirteen original essays by prominent scholars in the history of evolutionary thought. The volume is intended both to represent the best of today's research in the field and also to celebrate the work of...

Semiconductor electronics is the major technology of our age. Its achievement and potential are vast, its application and influence ubiquitous, its social and economic consequences uncertain. Semiconductor electronics has become the vehicle for nearly...

Charles Blacker Vignoles (1793-1875) has been somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries, the Stephensons, Brunel and Locke. Yet from 1825 to 1870, he was continually involved in the field of civil engineering in the UK, Ireland and overseas. Among his...

Primarily a scientific biography of Walther H. Nernst (1864-1941), one of Germany's most important, productive and often controversial scientists, this 1999 book addresses a set of specific scientific problems that evolved at the intersection of physics,...

This book investigates, through the problem of the Earth's shape, part of the development of post-Newtonian mechanics by the Parisian scientific community during the first half of the eighteenth century. In the Principia, Newton first raised the question...

The thirteen original essays in this book examine the status and development of the sciences in the eighteenth century. The last generation has seen a revolution in the methodology adopted by historians of science: The development of science is no longer...

A collection of twenty original essays on the history of science and mathematics. The topics covered embrace the main themes of Whiteside's scholarly work, emphasising Newtonian topics: mathematics and astronomy to Newton; Newton's manuscripts; Newton's...

The history of the Royal Society in the nineteenth century is published as a full-length account for the first time in this book. Dr Marie Boas Hall has meticulously explored this fascinating period, using the Royal Society's own records. In 1800 the...

This book is a study of the astronomical culture of sixteenth-century Europe. It examines, in particular, the ways in which members of the nascent international astronomical community shared information, attracted patronage and respect for their work,...

Dubbed 'Darwin's Bulldog' for his combative role in the Victorian controversies over evolutionary theory, Thomas Huxley has been widely regarded as the epitome of the professional scientist who emerged in the nineteenth century from the restrictions of...

This book challenges the traditional historiography of the Scientific Revolution, probably the single most important unifying concept in the history of science. Usually referring to the period from Copernicus to Newton (roughly 1500 to 1700), the...

Renaissance and Revolution is a collection of fifteen essays which opens up alternative perspectives on some of the problems seen to be associated with the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The topics treated include the...

Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries, there was created under the Yi Dynasty in Korea a remarkable series of astronomical instruments, star-charts and clocks. The present volume is the result of close collaboration between four...

Historians have long recognized that the rebirth of science in twelfth-century Europe flowed from a search for ancient scientific texts. But this search presupposes knowledge and interest; we only seek what we know to be valuable. The emergence of...

During the 1930s, psychologists Gordon Allport, Gardner Murphy, and Lois Barclay Murphy emerged from the fields of social and personality psychology to challenge the neo-behavioralist status quo in American social science. Willing to experiment with the...

Modern chemistry, so alarming, so necessary, so ubiquitous, became a mature science in nineteenth-century Europe. As it developed, often from a lowly position in medicine or in industry, so chemists established themselves as professional men; but...

Psychologists on the March argues that the Second World War had a profound impact on the modern psychological profession in America. Before the war, psychology was viewed largely as an academic discipline, drawing its ideology and personnel from the...

Psychologists on the March argues that the Second World War had a profound impact on the modern psychological profession in America. Before the war, psychology was viewed largely as an academic discipline, drawing its ideology and personnel from the...

This innovative collection of original essays focuses on the ways in which geography, gender, race, and religion influenced the reception of Darwinism in the English-speaking world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although studies of...

This book compares resistance to technology across time, nations, and technologies. Three post-war examples - nuclear power, information technology, and biotechnology - are used in the analysis. The focus is on post-1945 Europe, with comparisons made...

Focusing on the two seventeenth-century pioneers of microscopic dicovery, the Dutchmen Jan Swammerdam and Antoni van Leewenhoek, Ruestow demonstrates that their uneasiness with their social circumstances spurred their discoveries. Though arguing that...

During the 1930s, psychologists Gordon Allport, Gardner Murphy, and Lois Barclay Murphy emerged from the fields of social and personality psychology to challenge the neo-behavioralist status quo in American social science. Willing to experiment with the...

This collection of original essays by his former graduate students and colleagues honors Richard S. Westfall, a highly influential scholar in the history of the physical sciences and their relations with religion. The book is divided into three parts...

This book is about the influence of varying theological conceptions of contingency and necessity on two versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650) both believed that all...

This is a study of the nature and role of science in the exploration of the Canadian Arctic. It covers the century that began with the British Royal Naval expeditions of 1818 and ended with the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18. Professor Levere...

Probably the most celebrated controversy in all of the history of science was that between Newton and Leibniz over the invention of the calculus. The argument ranged far beyond a mere priority dispute and took on the character of a war between two...

William Whiston succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1703. Like his predecessor, Whiston presents an interesting combination of the scientific and the theological mind, but whereas Newton carefully concealed the...

Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences presents a sampling of work in the history of science by colleagues and former students and associates of I. Bernard Cohen, one of the most influential figures in the rise of the history of science as a...

The discovery of high-temperature superconductivity was hailed as a major scientific breakthrough, inducing an unprecedented excitement and expectation among the scientific community and in the international press. This book sets this research...

This is the first book in any language to attempt a comprehensive discussion of the relations between government, technology and science in Philip II's Spain. In histories of early-modern European technology and science, Spain has consistently been...

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is today remembered mainly for his attempt to complete his difference and analytical engines, the principles of which anticipate the major ideas of the modern digital computer. This book describes the evolution of Babbage's...

The greatest ambition of any moderately successful nineteenth-century French scientist was to become a member of the Academy of Sciences. Science under Control is the first major study, in any language, of this elite institution, in a period which began...

The founding of the Nobel Prize in 1901 confirmed the internationalisation of science. The workings of the Nobel institution rested on an international community of scientists who forwarded candidates for the prizes. Along with the candidates and...

This book illuminates the role of technological stagnation in the decline of the American electric utility industry in the late 1960s and 1970s. Unlike other interpreters of the industry's woes, Professor Hirsh argues that a long and successful history...

Science, Vine and Wine in Modern France examines the role of science in the civilization of wine in modern France. Viticulture, the science of the vine itself, and oenology, the science of winemaking, are its subjects. Together they can boast of at least...

Focusing on the two seventeenth-century pioneers of microscopic dicovery, the Dutchmen Jan Swammerdam and Antoni van Leewenhoek, Ruestow demonstrates that their uneasiness with their social circumstances spurred their discoveries. Though arguing that...

This book explores the origins of the American intelligence testing movement. It follows the life and work of Henry Herbert Goddard, America's first intelligence tester and author of the most popular American eugenics tract, The Kallikak Family. The...