Brief biography of this early 20th -entury Austrian theoretical physicist with appraisals of his work, in particular disparaging his highly influential What Is Life? as of little value.
Publications
The list of selected staff publications may be searched by keyword or author and can be sorted by year.
"Schrödinger, Erwin."
in The Oxford Companion to the History of Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp.733–34.
"Atom Smashers: Fifty Years': Preview of an Exhibit on the History of High Energy Accelerators,"
IEEE Trans. on Nuclear Science, NS-24: 1896–99 (1977).
Describes concept and content of a large exhibition on the history of particle accelerators and detectors, then in preparation, and on display until 1988.
"Scientific Internationalism and the Weimar Physicists: The Ideology and its Manipulation in Germany after World War I,"
Isis, 64: 151–180 (1973).
Explores internationalism as an element of the ideology of scientists, and the ways in which German physicists and other scholars reconciled that ideology with nationalistic attitudes and behaviors in the decade following World War I.
"Atomic Clocks': Preview of an Exhibit at the Smithsonian,"
Proceedings of the 36th Annual Frequency Control Symposium (U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Command, 1982), 220–22.
Describes concept and content of exhibition on the history of atomic clocks then in preparation, and on display until 1988.
"Swords into ploughshares': breaking new ground with radar hardware and technique in physical research after World War II."
Reviews of Modern Physics, 67: 397–455 (1995).
A review of the many different areas of physical research in which the electronic hardware and the microwave techniques developed in World War II radar programs were fruitfully applied after the war. Special attention is given to the question of continuity vrs discontinuity in research directions from pre- to post-war as test of disciplinary autonomy. Some 500 references given.
"The Fall of Parity."
The Physics Teacher, 20: 281–88 (1982).
Illustrated narrative account, elaborating the descriptive labels in a like-named Museum exhibition, 1981–82, in which was displayed the apparatus used in 1956 by Ernest Ambler and collaborators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to confirm experimentally the theoretical prediction by C.N. Yang and T.D. Lee of the non-conservation of parity in some nuclear processes (“weak interactions”).
"Atomichron®: The Atomic Clock from Concept to Commercial Product,"
Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, 73: 1181–1204 (1985).
Illustrated narrative account of the concept and realization of atomic frequency standards, 1873–1953, and, in greater detail, of development, 1953–56, of the first commercial atomic frequency standard. This device, tradenamed Atomichron®, incorporating the first vacuum-sealed cesium beam tube, resulted from the collaboration of MIT physicist Jerrold Zacharias, and his student R.T. Daly Jr, with the National [Radio] Company of Malden, Mass.
"The Atom Smashers,"
in The Smithsonian Book of Invention (Smithsonian Exposition Books, 1978), 132–139.
A narrative illustrated by dramatic photographs of the exhibition Atom smashers: fifty years, on display 1977-1988.
"Behind quantum electronics: national security as basis for physical research in the United States, 1940–1960."
Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 18: 149–229 (1987). Reprinted in Science and Society: The History of Modern Physical Science in the Twentieth Century. Peter Louis Galison, Michael Gordin, and David Kaiser, editors. 4 vols (New York : Routledge, 2001).
Gives various measures of the expansion of physical research in and following World War II and makes a broad case that it had the purpose and the result of reorienting that research toward refined and magnified effects, toward technique rather than toward concept, as this was where lay the interests of the national security agencies sponsoring that research.
"The Discovery of the Diffraction of X-rays by Crystals: A Critique of the Myths"
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 6: 38–71 (1969).
Argues that the usual accounts of the discovery of diffraction of X-rays by crystals in Munich in 1912 have rationalized that discovery by reading back into the minds of the discoverers an explanation of the observed effect that none of them then held, and that was only gradually and haltingly worked out after the discovery.
"Clocks, atomic."
Instruments of science: an historical encyclopedia. Robert Bud and D. J. Warner, eds. (Garland Publishing Co.: New York and London, 1998), pp. 118–121.
An overview of the several types of atomic frequency standards with some attention to the historical sequence and context of their development.
"The Doublet Riddle and Atomic Physics circa 1924,"
Isis, 59: 156–174 (1968).
Argues that the usual accounts of the development of quantum theory have mistakenly supposed that the problems relating to the interaction and the analogies between matter and radiation out of which the quantum mechanics emerged in 1925 were also the problems that in the preceding years quantum theorists regarded as most central and indicative for the failure of classical mechanics.
"From the social to the moral to the spiritual: the postmodern exaltation of the history of science"
in Positioning the History of Science [Festschrift for S.S. Schweber], edited by Jürgen Renn and Kostas Gavroglu. ‘Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science , Vol. 248’ (Berlin and New York: Springer Verlag, 2007), pp. 49-55.
Some consequences for the writing of the history of science following from the demise in postmodernity of disciplinarity, and of every other form of social solidarity, are pointed out. The rising interest in the moral dimension of history and history of science from the late 1960s through the 1980s, and the coincident decline of interest in the social dimension, is documented bibliometrically and asserted to be indicative of the onset of postmodernity. The recently surging interest in spirituality is similarly documented and asserted to be indicative of our presently more fully realized condition of postmodernity.
"The Financial Support and Political Alignment of Physicists in Weimar Germany,"
Minerva, 12: 39–66 (1974).
Examines the two principal supports for the research of German academic physicists created during the catastrophic inflation following the First World War—the Notgemeinschaft and the Helmholtz Gesellschaft—relating the policies and practices in distribution of funds to the political orientation of those providing the funds and those evaluating applications for funds.
“Collecting a National Tragedy,”
The Public Historian 20 (Fall 1998): 43–57.
"The Redefinition of Historical Scholarship: Calling a Tail a Leg?: Response,"
The Public Historian 21 (Spring 1999): 95–97.
“Collections Planning: Pinning Down a Strategy,”
Museum News 81 (March/April 2002): 42–45,66–67.
A Historical Guide to the United States,
editor and contributor. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986).
Public History: Essays from the Field,
e.d., with Peter S. LaPaglia. (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 2004).
"Contested Terrain: History, Museums and the Public,"
The Public Historian
“September 11 and the Mourning After: Reflections on Collecting and Interpreting the History of Tragedy,"
with Sarah M. Henry. The Public Historian 24 (Summer 2002): 37–52.
Facts About Museums: An Assessment of Data on the Museum Community
(Washington, D.C.: Institute of Museum and Library Services, 1998).
The AAM Guide to Collections Planning
with Elizabeth Merritt. (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2004).
Ordinary People and Everyday Life: Perspectives on the New Social History
e.d. (Nashville: AASLH, 1983).
"Pioneers of Public History: Serving Time in the Trenches: David F. Trask, Public Historian and Federal Historian,"
The Public Historian 22 (Spring 2000): 9–27.
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