Treccani History of Science
The Nineteenth Century
H3 – Physics
Edited by Jed Z. Buchwald
The creation of ‘physics’ in early XIXth century France
• 1. Physics in France in 1800
• 2. A big boss: Laplace
• 3. Laplacian physics
• 4. The young physicists of the Empire
• 5. After 1815
• 6. A physics of engineers
• 7. The reasons for and effects of a decline
The French laboratory: Regnault
• 1. French laboratories before Regnault.
• 2. The physical laboratory at the Collège de France.
• 3. Regnault’s research and experimental methods
• 4. Experimental physics and teaching laboratories in France.
British and German laboratories
• 1. Protestant German territories.
• 2. Catholic German territories and Joseph von Fraunhofer’s Optical Institute.
• 3. Public laboratories of instruction.
• 4. The Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt
• 5. British physics laboratories
Research seminar and theoretical physics
• 1. The origins of the seminar system in the German States.
• 2. Theoretical physics and the research seminar in Germany.
• 3. The Königsberg innovations leading to theoretical physics
• 4. Impact and significance of the ‘Königsberg model’ for theoretical physics
Mechanics of continua and discrete systems
• 1. Origin of the concepts of stress and strain
• 2. Transformation of coordinate: Coriolis
• 3. Hamilton’s principle
Acoustics
• 1. Physiological acoustics: Helmholtz
• 2. Lord Rayleigh and acoustics
Luminous rays and waves
• 1. Ray optics, the discovery of polarization and the Biot-Arago controversy
• 2. Interference and diffraction
• 3. A new mathematical optics and wave-particle debates
• 4. The physical structure of wave optics in the mid-19th century
• 5. Huygens’ principle, diffraction integral and the nature of non-polarized light
• 6. Optical interpretation of complex quantities
• 7. Dispersion before electromagnetic optics