Before Big Science : The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940

by Nye, Mary Jo

• ISBN13: 9780674063822
• ISBN10: 0674063821
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Today's vast multinational scientific monoliths bear little resemblance to the modest laboratories of the early nineteenth century. Yet early in the nineteenth century--when heat and electricity were still counted among the elements--changes were already under way that would revolutionize chemistry and physics into the "big science" of the late twentieth century, expanding tiny, makeshift laboratories into bustling research institutes and replacing the scientific amateurs and generalist savants of the early Victorian era with the professional specialists of contemporary physical science.Mary Jo Nye traces the social and intellectual history of the physical sciences from the early 1800s to the beginning of the Second World War, examining the sweeping transformation of scientific institutions and professions during the period and the groundbreaking experiments that fueled that change, from the earliest investigations of molecular chemistry and field dynamics to the revolutionary breakthroughs of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and nuclear science.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Preface and Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: Modern Science and Big Science	xiii
Disciplinary Organization in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry and Physics	1	(27)
Dalton's Atom and Two Paths for the Study of Matter	28	(29)
The Electromagnetic View of Nature and a World of Ether	57	(31)
Thermodynamics, Thermochemistry, and the Science of Energy	88	(32)
Theory and Practice in Organic Chemistry: Biological Modes of Thought in a Physical Science	120	(27)
A New Chemistry, A New Physics: Radiations, Particles, and Wave Mechanics after 1895	147	(42)
Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Creation of Nuclear Science, 1914-1940	189	(36)
Conclusion: The Claims of Science	225	(6)
Chronology	231	(9)
Notes and References	240	(8)
Bibliographical Essay	248	(21)
Name Index	269	(6)
Subject Index	275