The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics

Peter J. Bussey, Contemporary Physics This is a very valuable volume that should be in every physics department library.

Jeremy Butterfield, Trinity College, University of Cambridge What a wonderful book! From 1600 to the present day, we are led through the history of physics in its many guises. We see the strange and recalcitrant phenomena, the inventive development of instrumentation and experiments, the arcane intricacy of theory, and the pervasive social, cultural and economic influences and consequences of physics. Anyone interested in the history of science will delight in this book. So will any physicist, and any philosopher of science.

Bruce J. Hunt, University of Texas Over the last thirty years, historians of physics have re-examined and rethought almost every aspect of their subject. The time is clearly ripe for a fresh overview of the field, and Jed Z. Buchwald and Robert Fox have assembled a first rate group of scholars to provide just that. Their Handbook is filled with sharp insights on everything from Galileo's experimental practices to the role quantum physics played in the making of Silicon Valley. It will prove indispensible to anyone seeking to understand how physics has grown and shaped our view of the world over the past four centuries.

Optics and Photonics News This excellent book points out connections between instruments, observations, theories and discoveries, as well as communication among physicists. The book is replete with key references, clear figures and name and subject indexes.

Jed Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and a Killam Fellowship in 1990 (Canada), Buchwald was trained at Princeton and Harvard. From 1974 to 1992 he taught at, and then served as Director of, the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. From 1992 to 2001 he was at MIT as Dibner Professor of the History of Science, where he also directed the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Buchwald has authored or co-authored five books and edited eight volumes on the history of science and related matters, as well as about seventy articles. Robert Fox read physics at Oxford and then took a doctorate in the history of science, also at Oxford. He taught in the Department of History of the University of Lancaster from 1966, being awarded a personal chair in the history of science there in 1987. After a brief period as Assistant Director and Head of the Research and Information Services Division in the Science Museum, London, he was appointed to the chair of the history of science at the University of Oxford in 1988. Since retiring from the Oxford chair in 2006, he has held visiting professorships in the USA, at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (2007) and East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (2009), and the Czech Republic, at the Czech National University of Technology (2010). He has served as President of the Division of History of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (1993-7) and of the IUHPS (1995-7).

PART I: PHYSICS AND THE NEW SCIENCE; PART II: THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; PART III: FASHIONING THE DISCIPLINE: FROM NATURAL PHILOSOPHY TO PHYSICS; PART IV: MODERN PHYSICS