The last fifty years—a revolution?
DOI: 10.1063/1.2914363
In some periods great conceptual revolutions shake the world of physics; at other times research seems to plod ahead within the confines of an established framework. And the structure of the physics community must change in a way that somehow matches the changing style of research. What, then, has been the form of physics during our own lifetime, and how has it changed? This is a difficult, but not impossible question. Only history can give us an inkling of the answer.
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References
1. New York Times, 30 September 1931, X:3.
See also Millikan, Science and the New Civilization, Scribner’s, Boston (1930), page 73.2. Millikan, Science and Life, Pilgrim, Boston (1924), page 68.
3. S. Weart, “The Physics Business in America, 1919–1940: A Statistical Reconnaissance,” pages 295–358 in Nathan Reingold, ed., The Sciences in The American Context: New Perspectives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (1979).
4. Public attitudes to radioactivity will be discussed in my book, Nuclear Fear, now in preparation.
5. Gamow, Constitution of Atomic Nuclei and Radioactivity, Oxford U.P. (1931).
6. Nobel Prize lectures, published in Rev. Mod. Phys. 30 (1980) and elsewhere.
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See also Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1964), pages 83–84 and passim.9. Quoted in Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, Grosset & Dunlap, New York (1963), page 474.
10. David O. Edge and Michael J. Mulkay, Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain, Wiley, New York (1976), pages 386–94.
11. New York Times, 30 September 1931 X:3.
12. C. S. Smith to author, 31 October 1980.
More about the authors
Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics, New York.
