The Physical Tourist

We organized and led a European study course for American undergraduate university students to explore the early history of relativity and quantum theory. We were inspired by The Physical Tourist articles published in this journal on Munich, Bern, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Göttingen. We describe this adventure both for others wishing to teach such a course and for anyone wishing to walk in the footsteps of the physicists who revolutionized physics in the early decades of the twentieth century.     

Concepts of Time in Physics: A Synopsis

I summarize the historical development of concepts of time in physics from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century. Editors’ Note: Max Jammer received the American Physical Society/American Institute of Physics Abraham Pais Prize for the History of Physics for 2007, “For his groundbreaking historical studies of fundamental concepts in physics, including his comprehensive account of the development of quantum mechanics.” We publish here his Pais Prize Lecture, which was presented at the APS meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, on April 16, 2007.     

中外物理教育研究与发展的初步比较

教学期刊论文的情况是教学情况的一种反映．国内外的物理教育研究期刊分别为《物理教学》、《大学物理》、Physics Education，The Physics Teacher和American Journal of Physics．文章利用物理教学期刊论文，分别从论文的形式(前言、摘要和参考文献)和内容两方面对中国与国际的物理教育研究与发展开展了初步的比较研究，通过利用教育理论对统计资料的解释初步揭示了国内外物理教育研究的差距，为它们的进一步发展提供了启发性和指导性的建议．     

Transnational Quantum: Quantum Physics in India through the Lens of Satyendranath Bose

This paper traces the social and cultural dimensions of quantum physics in colonial India where Satyendranath Bose worked. By focusing on Bose’s approach towards the quantum and his collaboration with Albert Einstein, I argue that his physics displayed both the localities of doing science in early twentieth century India as well as a cosmopolitan dimension. He transformed the fundamental new concept of the light quantum developed by Einstein in 1905 within the social and political context of colonial India. This cross-pollination of the local with the global is termed here as the locally rooted cosmopolitan nature of Bose’s science. The production of new knowledge through quantum statistics by Bose show the co-constructed nature of physics and the transnational nature of the quantum.     

Determination of the elementary charge and the quantum metrological triangle experiment

The elementary charge e is of fundamental importance in physics. The determination of its value, which is closely linked to progress of the measurement techniques, started in the beginning of the twentieth century and is still on-going. Today, in the frame of the CODATA adjustment, the evaluation of the fundamental constant, e, is derived from a complex calculation and is no more related to a single experiment. But the development of single electron tunneling (SET) devices, started in the early 90s, has opened the path towards modern metrological systems as quantum current sources. Thus a new direct determination of e is possible by implementing an electron pump and the set-up of the quantum metrological triangle (QMT) in combination with the experiments linking mechanical and electrical units. Furthermore, we show how the QMT experiment can contribute to the establishment of a new system of units based on fundamental constants of physics.     

Mach on the principles of the theory of heat

Ernst Mach (1838-1916) is chiefly famous on two counts: for his brilliant experimental work on shock waves (in recognition of which the Mach number is named after him) and for his numerous critical historical studies of the development of physics. It was through these studies that Mach became an extremely influential and controversial figure in the physics of the twentieth century. This explains why the present work, a translation into English of his Die Principien der Wärmelehre, which was first published in 1896, now appears as Volume 17 of the Vienna Circle Collection published by Reidel. (The Vienna Circle was a discussion group of philosophically interested scholars who met weekly from 1925 to 1936 at the University of Vienna. Mach was regarded as one of their precursors.)     

Synchrotron Radiation Facilities in China

Synchrotron radiation activities in China date back to the late 1970s. With the large increase of investment in science by the Chinese central government to promote the development of science and technology in China, quite a few large scientific projects were proposed by the scientific community, among which were Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC) and Hefei Synchrotron Radiation Light Source (HLS). The major aim of BEPC was for the studies of high energy particle physics with a parasitic synchrotron radiation facility, i.e., the so-called Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF). It started operation in 1991 and became the first synchrotron radiation facility in China. As a parasitic facility, BSRF operated a few months a year and played an important role in fostering the synchrotron radiation user community in China. The HLS, a dedicated synchrotron radiation facility, came into operation almost at the same time as BSRF. As a lower energy synchrotron radiation facility, it aimed mostly at the applications of synchrotron radiation VUV wavelength range. Both BSRF and HLS were upgraded again due to strong demands from users. The rapid development of synchrotron radiation applications and facilities in the world in the 1980s and early 1990s spurred the great interest of Chinese scientists to build an advanced synchrotron radiation light source. A third generation light source was first proposed in mainland China in 1993 and was later shaped as the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) in 1995.     

A Physicist in the Corridors of Power: P. M. S. Blackett's Opposition to Atomic Weapons Following the War

In 1948, the year in which P. M. S. Blackett received the Nobel Prize in physics, he published a highly controversial book on the military and political consequences of atomic energy. The book appeared in the United States under the sensationalist title Fear, War and the Bomb. Blackett had been a naval officer during the First World War, a veteran of Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory and head of the physics department at Manchester in the interwar years, and he was a founder of operational research during the Second World War. Vilified in the British and American press in the 1940s and 1950s, he continued to contest prevailing nuclear weapons strategy, finding a more favorable reception for his arguments by the early 1960s. This paper examines the publication and reception of Blackett's views on atomic weapons, analyzing the risks to a physicist who writes about a subject other than physics, as well as the circumstances that might compel one to do so.     

News and Views: Biology—Where the Action Is

The latest golden age of physics was the first half of the twentieth century, when quantum mechanics was developed. A comparable revolution is under way in biology.     

Planck, the Quantum, and the Historians

In late 1900, the German theoretical physicist Max Planck derived an expression for the spectrum of black-body radiation. That derivation was the first step in the introduction of quantum concepts into physics. But how did Planck think about his result in the early years of the twentieth century? Did he assume that his derivation was consistent with the continuous energies inherent in Maxwellian electrodynamics and Newtonian mechanics? Or did he see the beginnings, however tentative and uncertain, of the quantum revolution to come? Historians of physics have debated this question for over twenty years. In this article, I review that debate and, at the same time, present Planck's achievement in its historical context.     

Nanoscale device modeling: the Green’s function method

The non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) formalism provides a sound conceptual basis for the devlopment of atomic-level quantum mechanical simulators that will be needed for nanoscale devices of the future. However, this formalism is based on concepts that are unfamiliar to most device physicists and chemists and as such remains relatively obscure. In this paper we try to achieve two objectives: (1) explain the central concepts that define the ‘language’ of quantum transport, and (2) illustrate the NEGF formalism with simple examples that interested readers can easily duplicate on their PCs. These examples all involve a short n ^+  + – n ⁺ – n ^+  + resistor whose physics is easily understood. However, the basic formulation is quite general and can even be applied to something as different as a nanotube or a molecular wire, once a suitable Hamiltonian has been identified. These examples also underscore the importance of performing self-consistent calculations that include the Poisson equation. The I–V characteristics of nanoscale structures is determined by an interesting interplay between twentieth century physics (quantum transport) and nineteenth century physics (electrostatics) and there is a tendency to emphasize one or the other depending on one’s background. However, it is important to do justice to both aspects in order to derive real insights.     

On the einstein-murphy interaction

This paper is a first attempt to reconcile the two great concepts of twentieth century physics: Einstein's theory of general relativity, and Murphy's law.This work has been supported in part by the Office of Aerospace Research, United States Air Force, on contract No. AF. AFOSR-$3.14159265.Refuses to divulge present address.     

中国医学物理学的过去、现在与未来

医学物理（medical physics，MP）是把物理学的原理和方法应用于人类疾病的预防、诊断、治疗和保健的一门交叉学科，是物理学与医学实践相结合的一门独立的分支学科．它是研究人类疾病诊、治过程中的物理现象，并用物理方法表达这种现象．医学物理包括放射肿瘤物理（rsdiation oncdogy physics，ROP）、医学影像物理（medical imaong physics，MIP）、核医学物理（nuclear medicine physics，NMP），其他非电离辐射如核磁、超声、微波、射频、激光等物理因子在医学中的应用，和保健物理（heath physics，HP）等分支内容．医学物理学和生物医学工程学（biomedical engineefing，BME）是一对栾生的兄弟学科，分别从物理学的角度（前者）和工程学的角度（后者）研究人类疾病诊断、治疗及健康保健过程中的生命现象和采取相应的物理措施和工程手段。医学物理学与物理医学（physical medicine，PM）是完全两个不同的概念，前者是物理学的分支，后者是医学的分支．自上世纪60年代以来，中国医学物理学有了很大的进展，推动了中国现代放射肿瘤学、核医学和医学影像学的发展；成立了自己的学术组织，并成为国际医学物理组织（IOMP）的成员国组织．随着中国逐步奔入小康社会，为适应人民大众对健康的需求和现代化医院发展的需要，中国医学物理应该加快发展．     

Turning the Ship: The Transformation of DESY, 1993–2009

This article chronicles the most recent history of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) located in Hamburg, Germany, with particular emphasis on how this national laboratory founded for accelerator-based particle physics shifted its research program toward multi-disciplinary photon science. Synchrotron radiation became DESY’s central experimental research program through a series of changes in its organizational, scientific, and infrastructural setup and the science policy context. Furthermore, the turn toward photon science is part of a broader transformation in the late twentieth century in which nuclear and particle physics, once the dominating fields in national and international science budgets, gave way to increasing investment in the materials sciences and life sciences. Synchrotron radiation research took a lead position on the experimental side of these growing fields and became a new form of big science, generously funded by governments and with user communities expanding across both academia and industry.     

The Four Lives of a Nuclear Accelerator

Electrostatic accelerators have emerged as a major tool in research and industry in the second half of the twentieth century. In particular in low energy nuclear physics they have been essential for addressing a number of critical research questions from nuclear structure to nuclear astrophysics. This article describes this development on the example of a single machine which has been used for nearly sixty years at the forefront of scientific research in nuclear physics. The article summarizes the concept of electrostatic accelerators and outlines how this accelerator developed from a bare support function to an independent research tool that has been utilized in different research environments and institutions and now looks forward to a new life as part of the experiment CASPAR at the 4,850” level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility.     

民办高校大学物理教学方法与实践

民办高校的大部分学生开始学习大学物理时没有自信心,也无正确的学习目的,学习大学物理仅仅为了考试及格,拿到毕业证.因此,民办高校大学物理教学的首要任务是提高学生的非智力品质.学校要充分认识到学生基础差的因素,不薄专业厚基础,制订适合民办高校学生的大学物理教学大纲,编写适应学生的大学物理教材,带领学生开展扎实的大学物理实验和实践教学.与此同时,要耐心、细致地采用多种形式的有效教学方法来提高大学物理教学质量.本文是作者多年在民办高校从教的经验总结.     

Physics in Helsinki

I trace the origins of teaching and research in physics and astronomy during the 17th and 18th centuries at the Academy of Turku (Åbo), which was relocated to Helsinki in 1827 and renamed as the Imperial Alexander University of Finland, and which in turn in 1917 became the University of Helsinki. I discuss the growth of physics in Helsinki during the 19th century, which culminated in the opening of a large new Physical Institute in 1911, pointing out the individuals responsible for these developments and the sites associated with them. I also discuss related events, such as the founding of a new astronomical observatory and a new magnetic observatory and the development of technical education in Helsinki. I conclude by discussing the construction of an accelerator laboratory and other important developments in physics in Helsinki after 1945.     

Between teaching and research: Adolphe Ganot and the definition of electrostatics (1851–1881)

Adolphe Ganot's Traité was a canonical physics textbook in 19th-century Europe. In this period, static electricity was largely based on research conducted during the eighteenth century. However, the discussion on the theories of electricity had an important role in the configuration of physics as a discipline through the replacement of imponderable fluids by other frameworks such as the conservation of energy. In spite of this process of unification, the practices defining nineteenth-century electrostatics were not uniform. In this paper we intend to provide a big picture of nineteenth-century electrostatics and to launch a fruitful dialogue between historians and scientists.