Robert T. Gunther and the Old Ashmolean
Author: Robert Theodore Gunther
Publisher:
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 116
ISBN-13:
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Physics in Oxford, 1839-1939
Author: Robert Fox
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2005-06-16
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 019152445X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPhysics in Oxford, 1839-1939 offers a challenging new interpretation of pre-war physics at the University of Oxford, which was far more dynamic than most historians and physicists have been prepared to believe. It explains, on the one hand, how attempts to develop the University's Clarendon Laboratory by Robert Clifton, Professor of Experimental Philosophy from 1865 to 1915, were thwarted by academic politics and funding problems, and latterly by Clifton's idiosyncratic concern with precision instrumentation. Conversely, by examining in detail the work of college fellows and their laboratories, the book reconstructs the decentralized environment that allowed physics to enter on a period of conspicuous vigour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially at the characteristically Oxonian intersections between physics, physical chemistry, mechanics, and mathematics. Whereas histories of Cambridge physics have tended to focus on the self-sustaining culture of the Cavendish Laboratory, it was Oxford's college-trained physicists who enabled the discipline to flourish in due course in university as well as college facilities, notably under the newly appointed professors, J. S. E. Townsend from 1900 and F. A. Lindemann from 1919. This broader perspective allows us to understand better the vitality with which physicists in Oxford responded to the demands of wartime research on radar and techniques relevant to atomic weapons and laid the foundations for the dramatic post-war expansion in teaching and research that has endowed Oxford with one of the largest and most dynamic schools of physics in the world.
Robert Hooke
Author: Michael Hunter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-03-02
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13: 1351902814
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRobert Hooke (1635-1703) was a genius whose wide-ranging achievements are at last receiving the recognition that they deserve. Long overshadowed by such eminent contemporaries as Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke's own seminal contributions to science, architecture and technology are now being acclaimed in their own right. Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society when it was chartered in 1662 and author of the famous Micrographia (1665), Hooke also showed unparalleled ingenuity in designing machines and instruments, and played a crucial role as Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire. This volume represents a benchmark in the study of Hooke, bringing together a comprehensive set of studies of different aspects of his life, thought and artistry. Its sections deal with Hooke's life and reputation; his contributions to celestial mechanics and astronomy, and to speculative natural philosophy; the instruments that he designed; and his work in architecture and construction. The introduction places the studies in the context of our current understanding of Hooke and his milieu, while the book also contains a comprehensive bibliography. In all, it will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in a figure whose complexity and importance are becoming clear after centuries of neglect.
Oxford Figures
Author: John Fauvel
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-09-19
Total Pages: 417
ISBN-13: 019968197X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe mathematical tradition at Oxford is one of the oldest in Britain, and Oxford scholars have been at the forefront of mathematical research for the past eight centuries. This is the story of the intellectual and social life of this community, and of its interactions with the wider world.
Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy
Author: Christopher Hollings
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-11-16
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 0192654926
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEstablished in the early seventeenth century following a bequest to the university by Sir William Sedley, Oxford's Sedleian Professorship of Natural Philosophy is one of the university's oldest professorships. In common with other such positions established around this time, such as the Savilian Professorships of Geometry and Astronomy, for example, its purpose was to provide centrally organised lectures on a specific subject. While the Professorship is now a high-profile research post in applied mathematics, it has previously been held by physicians, an astronomer, and several people in the eighteenth century whose credentials in natural philosophy are much less clear. This edited volume traces the varied history of the chair through the first four centuries of its existence, combining specialised contributions from historians of medicine, of science, of mathematics, and of universities, together with personal reminiscences of some of the more recent holders of the post.
A History of Scientific Journals
Author: Aileen Fyfe
Publisher: UCL Press
Published: 2022-10-03
Total Pages: 666
ISBN-13: 1800082320
DOWNLOAD EBOOKModern scientific research has changed so much since Isaac Newton’s day: it is more professional, collaborative and international, with more complicated equipment and a more diverse community of researchers. Yet the use of scientific journals to report, share and store results is a thread that runs through the history of science from Newton’s day to ours. Scientific journals are now central to academic research and careers. Their editorial and peer-review processes act as a check on new claims and findings, and researchers build their careers on the list of journal articles they have published. The journal that reported Newton’s optical experiments still exists. First published in 1665, and now fully digital, the Philosophical Transactions has carried papers by Charles Darwin, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking. It is now one of eleven journals published by the Royal Society of London. Unrivalled insights from the Royal Society’s comprehensive archives have enabled the authors to investigate more than 350 years of scientific journal publishing. The editorial management, business practices and financial difficulties of the Philosophical Transactions and its sibling Proceedings reveal the meaning and purpose of journals in a changing scientific community. At a time when we are surrounded by calls to reform the academic publishing system, it has never been more urgent that we understand its history.
Sympathetic Attractions
Author: Patricia Fara
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-07-14
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13: 1400864364
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this interdisciplinary study of eighteenth-century England, Patricia Fara explores how natural philosophers constructed magnetism as a science, appropriating the skills and knowledge of experienced navigators. For people of this period, magnetic phenomena reverberated with the symbolism of occult mystery, sexual attraction, and universal sympathies; in this maritime nation, magnetic instruments such as navigational compasses heralded imperial expansion, commercial gain, and scientific progress. By analyzing such multiple associations, Fara reconstructs cultural interactions in the days just prior to the creation of disciplinary science. Not only does this illustrated book provide a kaleidoscopic view of a changing society, but it also portrays the emergence of public science. Linking this rise in interest to the utility and mysteriousness of magnetism, Fara organizes her discussion into themes, including commercialization, imperialism, instruments and invention, the role of language, attitudes toward the past, and the relationship between religion and natural philosophy. Fara shows that natural philosophers, proclaiming themselves as the only true experts on magnetism, actively participated in massive transformations of English life. In their bids for public recognition as elite specialists, they engaged in controversies that resonated with religious, economic, moral, gender, and political implications. These struggles for social and scientific authority in the eighteenth century provide the background for better understanding the cultural topography of modern society. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Real, Mechanical, Experimental
Author: Francesco G. Sacco
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-06-29
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 3030444511
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis original work contains the first detailed account of the natural philosophy of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), leading figure of the early Royal Society. From celestial mechanics to microscopy, from optics to geology and biology, Hooke’s contributions to the Scientific Revolution proved decisive. Focusing separately on partial aspects of Hooke’s works, scholars have hitherto failed to see the unifying idea of the natural philosophy underlying them. Some of his unpublished papers have passed almost unnoticed. Hooke pursued the foundation of a real, mechanical and experimental philosophy, and this book is an attempt to reconstruct it. The book includes a selection of Hooke's unpublished papers. Readers will discover a study of the new science through the works of one of the most known protagonists. Challenging the current views on the scientific life of restoration England, this book sheds new light on the circulation of Baconian ideals and the mechanical philosophy in the early Royal Society. This book is a must-read to anybody interested in Hooke, early modern science or Restoration history.
A History of Magic and Experimental Science: & 4. Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
Author: Lynn Thorndike
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 1923
Total Pages: 858
ISBN-13: 9780231087964
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTranslating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries
Author: Harold John Cook
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 473
ISBN-13: 3643902468
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKnowledge of nature may be common to all of humanity, yet it is written in many tongues. The story of the Tower of Babel is not only an etiology of the multitude of languages, it also suggests that a "confusion of tongues" confounds communication. However, as the contributors to this volume show, translation is always a transformation. This book examines how such transformations generate new knowledge and how translations helped to establish a new science. Situated at the border of the Germanic and Romance languages, home to a highly educated population, the Low Countries fostered multilingualism and became one of the chief sites for translation. (Series: Low Countries Studies on the Circulation of Natural Knowledge - Vol. 3)
