Remarkable Physicists: From Galileo to Yukawa

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Cambridge University Press, Jan 12, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 389 pages
The 250 years from the second half of the 17th century saw the birth of modern physics and its growth into one of the most successful of the sciences. The reader will find here the lives of 55 of the most remarkable physicists from that era described in brief biographies. Scientific and mathematical detail is kept to a minimum, so the reader who is interested in physics, but perhaps lacks the background to follow technical accounts, will find this collection an inviting and easy path through the subject's development.
 

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Contents

From Galileo to Daniel Bernoulli
1
Johannes Kepler 15711630
8
Christiaan Huygens 16291695
16
Isaac Newton 16421726
21
Daniel Bernoulli 17001782
31
From Franklin to Laplace
36
Roger Joseph Boscovich 17111787
47
Henry Cavendish 17311810
56
William Henry Bragg 18621942
199
Marie Curie 18671934
208
From Millikan to Einstein
221
Ernest Rutherford Lord Rutherford 18711937
227
Lise Meitner 18781968
234
Otto Hahn 18791968
242
Albert Einstein 18791955
247
From Ehrenfest to Schrodinger
259

Charles Augustin Coulomb 17361806
60
PierreSimon Laplace 17491827
65
From Rumford to Oersted
74
JeanBaptiste Fourier 17681830
85
Thomas Young 17731829
90
AndréMarie Ampére 17751836
97
Hans Christian Oested 17771851
102
From Ohm to Helmholtz
107
Michael Faraday 17911867
112
George Green 17931841
119
Joseph Henry 17971878
125
Hermann von Helmholtz 18211894
132
From Kelvin to Boltzmann
141
James Clerk Maxwell 18311879
150
J Willard Gibbs 18391903
157
John William Strutt Lord Rayleigh 18421919
163
Ludwig Boltzmann 18441906
168
From Rontgen to Marie Curie
177
Joseph John Thomson18561940
183
Max Planck 18581947
192
Max Born 18821970
266
Niels Bohr 18851962
273
Frederick Lindemann Lord Cherwell 18861957
284
Erwin Schrodinger 18871961
295
From de Broglie to Fermi
307
Satyendranath Bose 18941974
313
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza 18941984
320
JeanFrédéric Joliot 19001958
327
Enrico Fermi 19011954
335
From Heisenberg to Yukawa
343
Paul Dirac 19021984
353
J Robert Oppenheimer 19041967
359
Maria GoeppertMayer 19061972
364
Hideki Yukawa 19071981
369
Epilogue
375
Further Reading
379
Collections
385
Acknowledgements
387
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About the author (2004)

Ioan James is the former Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford. He won both the Junior Berwick and Whitehead Prizes of the London Mathematical Society.

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