Cathedrals of Science
Cathedrals of Science

Author: Patrick Coffey

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-08-29

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0199886547

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's personality smoothed his path to the Nobel Prize over Lewis. Coffey deals with moral and societal issues as well. These same scientists were the first to be seen by their countries as military assets. Fritz Haber, dubbed the "father of chemical warfare," pioneered the use of poison gas in World War I-vividly described-and Glenn Seaborg and Harold Urey were leaders in World War II's Manhattan Project; Urey and Linus Pauling worked for nuclear disarmament after the war. Science was not always fair, and many were excluded. The Nazis pushed Jewish scientists like Haber from their posts in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism was also a force in American chemistry, and few women were allowed in; Pauling, for example, used his influence to cut off the funding and block the publications of his rival, Dorothy Wrinch. Cathedrals of Science paints a colorful portrait of the building of modern chemistry from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

Photons
Photons

Author: Klaus Hentschel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-16

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 3319952528

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book focuses on the gradual formation of the concept of ‘light quanta’ or ‘photons’, as they have usually been called in English since 1926. The great number of synonyms that have been used by physicists to denote this concept indicates that there are many different mental models of what ‘light quanta’ are: simply finite, ‘quantized packages of energy’ or ‘bullets of light’? ‘Atoms of light’ or ‘molecules of light’? ‘Light corpuscles’ or ‘quantized waves’? Singularities of the field or spatially extended structures able to interfere? ‘Photons’ in G.N. Lewis’s sense, or as defined by QED, i.e. virtual exchange particles transmitting the electromagnetic force? The term ‘light quantum’ made its first appearance in Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on a “heuristic point of view” to cope with the photoelectric effect and other forms of interaction of light and matter, but the mental model associated with it has a rich history both before and after 1905. Some of its semantic layers go as far back as Newton and Kepler, some are only fully expressed several decades later, while others initially increased in importance then diminished and finally vanished. In conjunction with these various terms, several mental models of light quanta were developed—six of them are explored more closely in this book. It discusses two historiographic approaches to the problem of concept formation: (a) the author’s own model of conceptual development as a series of semantic accretions and (b) Mark Turner’s model of ‘conceptual blending’. Both of these models are shown to be useful and should be explored further. This is the first historiographically sophisticated history of the fully fledged concept and all of its twelve semantic layers. It systematically combines the history of science with the history of terms and a philosophically inspired history of ideas in conjunction with insights from cognitive science.

Fritz Haber
Fritz Haber

Author: Dietrich Stoltzenberg

Publisher: Chemical Heritage Foundation

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780941901246

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This long-awaited biography of Fritz Haber, now abridged by the author and translated into English, illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the 20th century. Haber was a pioneer in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and won the Nobel Prize for his synthesis of ammonia, a process essential for both fertilizer and explosives. His dedication to work spurred his efforts to increase support for scientific study in Germany; yet it also helped cause the breakdown of his two marriages. His ardent patriotism led him to develop chemical weapons for World War I and to try to extract gold from seawater, to help pay for Germany's huge war reparations. Yet Haber, a Jew by birth, was exiled from his homeland in 1933 by the Nazi party and died shortly after.

Neither Physics nor Chemistry
Neither Physics nor Chemistry

Author: Kostas Gavroglu

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-10-07

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0262297876

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The evolution of a discipline at the intersection of physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Quantum chemistry—a discipline that is not quite physics, not quite chemistry, and not quite applied mathematics—emerged as a field of study in the 1920s. It was referred to by such terms as mathematical chemistry, subatomic theoretical chemistry, molecular quantum mechanics, and chemical physics until the community agreed on the designation of quantum chemistry. In Neither Physics Nor Chemistry, Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simões examine the evolution of quantum chemistry into an autonomous discipline, tracing its development from the publication of early papers in the 1920s to the dramatic changes brought about by the use of computers in the 1970s. The authors focus on the culture that emerged from the creative synthesis of the various traditions of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. They examine the concepts, practices, languages, and institutions of this new culture as well as the people who established it, from such pioneers as Walter Heitler and Fritz London, Linus Pauling, and Robert Sanderson Mulliken, to later figures including Charles Alfred Coulson, Raymond Daudel, and Per-Olov Löwdin. Throughout, the authors emphasize six themes: epistemic aspects and the dilemmas caused by multiple approaches; social issues, including academic politics, the impact of textbooks, and the forging of alliances; the contingencies that arose at every stage of the developments in quantum chemistry; the changes in the field when computers were available to perform the extraordinarily cumbersome calculations required; issues in the philosophy of science; and different styles of reasoning.

Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton

Author: Gale E. Christianson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1996-09-19

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0199762368

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1665, when an epidemic of the plague forced Cambridge University to close, Isaac Newton, then a young, undistinguished scholar, returned to his childhood home in rural England. Away from his colleagues and professors, Newton embarked on one of the greatest intellectual odysseys in the history of science: he began to formulate the law of universal gravitation, developed the calculus, and made revolutionary discoveries about the nature of light. After his return to Cambridge, Newton's genius was quickly recognized and his reputation forever established. This biography also allows us to see the personal side of Newton, whose life away from science was equally fascinating. Quarrelsome, quirky, and not above using his position to silence critics and further his own career, he was an authentic genius with all too human faults.

ReAction!
ReAction!

Author: Mark A. Griep

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-08-12

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0199734402

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

ReAction! gives a scientist's and artist's response to the dark and bright sides of chemistry found in 140 films, most of them contemporary Hollywood feature films but also a few documentaries, shorts, silents, and international films. Even though there are some examples of screen chemistry between the actors and of behind-the-scenes special effects, this book is really about the chemistry when it is part of the narrative. It is about the dualities of Dr. Jekyll vs. inventor chemists, the invisible man vs. forensic chemists, chemical weapons vs. classroom chemistry, chemical companies that knowingly pollute the environment vs. altruistic research chemists trying to make the world a better place to live, and, finally, about people who choose to experiment with mind-altering drugs vs. the drug discovery process. Little did Jekyll know when he brought the Hyde formula to his lips that his personality split would provide the central metaphor that would come to describe chemistry in the movies. This book explores the two movie faces of this supposedly neutral science. Watching films with chemical eyes, Dr. Jekyll is recast as a chemist engaged in psychopharmaceutical research but who becomes addicted to his own formula. He is balanced by the often wacky inventor chemists who make their discoveries by trial-and-error.