Before Big Science : The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940
Editorial Reviews
Review
Diana Barkan, California Institute of Technology : With her characteristic elegance of style, Mary Jo Nye has given us for the first time a coherent and exciting history of the modern physical sciences, accessible to the general reader, and eminently suited for anyone studying or teaching the development and profound consequences of the transformations in physics and chemistry during the last two centuries.
Book Description
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.
Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940,Mary Jo Nye,Harvard University Press,0674063821,Chemistry (General),Chemistry - General,History,History Of Physics,Physics,Science,Science/Mathematics,20th century,Chemistry,Science / Chemistry / General,c 1800 to c 1900
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