Russell McCormmach

Last updated

Russell Keith McCormmach (born 9 October 1933) is an American historian of physics. [1]

McCormmach grew up in Walla Walla, Washington and studied physics at Washington State College with bachelor's degree in 1955. As a Rhodes scholar, he studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University with bachelor's degree in 1959. He then worked as an electronics engineer at Bell Laboratories. In 1967 he received a Ph.D. in the history of science from Case Institute of Technology under Martin J. Klein. McCormmach was then a professor of the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania and the Johns Hopkins University (until 1983), and then at the University of Oregon. There he is a professor emeritus. [1]

McCormmach studied the history of German physics in the 19th and 20th centuries. His novel Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist consists of the fictional reminiscences of an elderly German physics professor named Viktor Jacob who reflects on the revolutionary developments (relativity theory, quantum theory, and atomic physics) at the beginning of 20th century physics. The fictional character Viktor Jacob is partly based on Paul Drude (who died by suicide in 1906). In the novel, Viktor Jacob recalls Paul Drude as a friend.

With his wife Christa Jungnickel, Russell McCormmach co-authored a biography of Henry Cavendish and a history of German theoretical physics in the 19th and early 20th century. His biography of the 18th century English naturalist John Michell was published in 2012.

McCormmach received in 1987 the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society [2] and in 2010 the Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics from the American Physical Society. [1]

In 1969 he founded the journal Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (now named Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences ), for which he was the editor-in-chief for its first ten years.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ohm's law</span> Law of electrical current and voltage

Ohm's law states that the electric current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the three mathematical equations used to describe this relationship:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Born</span> German-British theoretical physicist (1882–1970)

Max Born was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. Born was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Cavendish</span> English natural philosopher, and scientist (1731–1810)

Henry Cavendish was an English-French natural philosopher and scientist who was an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper, On Factitious Airs. Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and gave the element its name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friedrich Ernst Dorn</span> German physicist and first to discover radioactive substance emitted from radon

Friedrich Ernst Dorn was a German physicist who was the first to discover that a radioactive substance, later named radon, is emitted from radium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arnold Sommerfeld</span> German theoretical physicist (1868–1951)

Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, was a German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and mentored many students for the new era of theoretical physics. He served as doctoral supervisor and postdoc supervisor to seven Nobel Prize winners and supervised at least 30 other famous physicists and chemists. Only J. J. Thomson's record of mentorship offers a comparable list of high-achieving students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cavendish experiment</span> Experiment measuring the force of gravity (1797–1798)

The Cavendish experiment, performed in 1797–1798 by English scientist Henry Cavendish, was the first experiment to measure the force of gravity between masses in the laboratory and the first to yield accurate values for the gravitational constant. Because of the unit conventions then in use, the gravitational constant does not appear explicitly in Cavendish's work. Instead, the result was originally expressed as the relative density of Earth, or equivalently the mass of Earth. His experiment gave the first accurate values for these geophysical constants.

John Michell was an English natural philosopher and clergyman who provided pioneering insights into a wide range of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, optics, and gravitation. Considered "one of the greatest unsung scientists of all time", he is the first person known to have proposed the existence of stellar bodies comparable to black holes, and the first to have suggested that earthquakes travelled in (seismic) waves. Recognizing that double stars were a product of mutual gravitation, he was the first to apply statistics to the study of the cosmos. He invented an apparatus to measure the mass of the Earth, and explained how to manufacture an artificial magnet. He has been called the father both of seismology and of magnetometry.

Paul Peter Ewald, FRS was a German crystallographer and physicist, a pioneer of X-ray diffraction methods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Neumann</span> Prussian mathematician (1832–1925)

Carl Gottfried Neumann was a German mathematical physicist and professor at several German universities. His work focused on applications of potential theory to physics and mathematics. He contributed to the mathematical formalization of electrodynamics and analytical mechanics. Neumann boundary conditions and the Neumann series are named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Drude</span> German physicist specializing in optics

Paul Karl Ludwig Drude was a German physicist specializing in optics. He wrote a fundamental textbook integrating optics with James Clerk Maxwell's theories of electromagnetism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Physical Society</span> Physics organisation in Germany

The German Physical Society is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked in 2014 when it reached 63,000, but it has been decreasing since then. It holds an annual conference and multiple spring conferences, which are held at various locations and along topical subjects of given sections of the DPG. The DPG serves the fields of pure and applied physics and aims to foster connections among German physicists, as well as the exchange of ideas between its members and foreign colleagues. The bylaws of the DPG commit the organization and its members to maintain scientific integrity and ethics, including freedom, tolerance, truthfulness, and dignity in scientific work, as well as promoting gender equality in the fields of physics and related sciences.

Energeticism, also called energism or energetics, is a superseded theory in science that posits that energy is the ultimate element of physical reality. Energeticism was developed during the end of the 19th century by Wilhelm Ostwald, Georg Helm and Pierre Duhem. It was also promoted by physicist Ernst Mach who opposed atomic theory, though his full commitment to it was sometimes ambiguous. Energetiscism attempted to substitute the hypothesis of atoms and molecules by energy relations.

Gregor Wentzel was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early years, he contributed to X-ray spectroscopy, but then broadened out to make contributions to quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, superconductivity and meson theory.

Martin Jesse Klein, usually cited as M. J. Klein, was a science historian of 19th and 20th century physics.

Edwin Crawford Kemble was an American physicist who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics and molecular structure and spectroscopy. During World War II, he was a consultant to the Navy on acoustic detection of submarines and to the Army on Operation Alsos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Göttingen Seven</span> Group of professors exiled for political protest

The Göttingen Seven were a group of seven liberal professors at University of Göttingen. In 1837, they protested against the annulment of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by its new ruler, King Ernest Augustus, and refused to swear an oath to the king. The company of seven was led by historian Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, who himself was one of the key advocates of the previous constitution. The other six were the Germanist brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, famed collectors and publishers of folklore, known collectively as the Brothers Grimm, jurist Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht, historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus, physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber, and theologian and orientalist Heinrich Georg August Ewald.

The Pfizer Award is awarded annually by the History of Science Society "in recognition of an outstanding book dealing with the history of science" that was "published in English during a period of three calendar years immediately preceding the year of competition."

<i>Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist</i> Book by Russell McCormmach

Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist is a historical novel by historian of science Russell McCormmach, published in 1982 by Harvard University Press. Set in 1918, the book explores the world of physics in the early 20th century—including the advent of modern physics and the role of physicists in World War I—through the recollections of the fictional Viktor Jakob. Jakob is an old German physicist who spent most of his career during the period of classical physics, a paradigm being confronted by the rapid and radical developments of relativistic physics in 1900s and 1910s. This conflict allows for extensive examination of the various tensions placed on Jakob by the academic environment, the German academic system, and the changing academic culture of the early 20th century.

Christa Jungnickel was a German-American historian of science.

<i>Intellectual Mastery of Nature</i> Book by Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach

Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein is a two-volume reference work on the history of theoretical physics by Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach that was initially published in 1986 by the University of Chicago Press. The book was well received, and it won the 1987 Pfizer Award, given annually by the History of Science Society. In 2017, the duo released a revised and condensed version of the book through Springer International Publishing, titled The Second Physicist: On the History of Theoretical Physics in Germany. The authors also wrote the 1996 and updated 1999 biography of Henry Cavendish, originally titled Cavendish. The book was given the subtitle The Experimental Life in the revised version of 1999.

References

  1. 1 2 3 2010 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics Recipient, American Physical Society
  2. "Pfizer Award". History of Science Society. Retrieved December 11, 2024.
  3. Lankford, John (1988). "Review of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein: Vol. 1, The Torch of Mathematics, 1800-1870 by Christa Jungnickel; Russell MacCormmach". The Journal of Higher Education. 59 (2): 231–233. doi:10.2307/1981694. JSTOR   1981694.
  4. Forman, Paul (March 1991). "Reviewed work: Intellectual Mastery of Nature; Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein. Vol. 1, The Torch of Mathematics, 1800-1870; Vol. 2, The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870-1925 by Christa Jungnickel & Russell McCormmach". Philosophy of Science. 58 (1): 129–132. doi:10.1086/289603. JSTOR   187893.
  5. Home, R. W. (December 2016). "Review of "Russell McCormmach. The Personality of Henry Cavendish—A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities" by Russell McCormmach". Isis. 107 (4): 845–846. doi:10.1086/689782.