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Article

APS and the Wider World

MAR 01, 1999
Founded a century ago, the American Physical Society not only has played a leading role in advancing and diffusing knowledge and understanding of physics, but has widened its influence and importance by speaking out on public issues.
Harry Lustig

Early America was not a fertile land for physics. Benjamin Franklin had been virtually alone in practicing physics in colonial times, and for nearly a century after him the seeds of physics hardly sprouted.

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References

  1. 1. G. H. Daniels, Science in American Society, Knopf, New York (1971).

  2. 2. D. J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, Harvard U. P., Cambridge, Mass, (1995).

  3. 3. A. G. Webster, Phys. Rev. 18, 306 (1904).https://doi.org/PHRVAO

  4. 4. M. Pupin, From Immigrant to Inventor, Scribner, New York (1925).

  5. 5. F. Bedell, Phys. Rev. 75, 1601 (1949).https://doi.org/PHRVAO

  6. 6. M. Phillips, Am. J. Phys. 58 (3), 219 (1990).

  7. 7. A. Halsted, “From Manhattan to Maryland—The American Physical Society and Its Relocation,” unpublished master’s thesis, Baruch College of the City University of New York (1993).

  8. 8. Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 1 (1899).

  9. 9. Various unpublished Minutes of the Council of the American Physical Society.

  10. 10. New York Times, 30 April 1939, p. 35.

More about the authors

Harry Lustig, University of New Mexico.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 52, Number 3

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