The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction

The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction by JL Heilbron

Synopsis: How does today’s physics—highly professionalized; inextricably linked to government and industry—link back to its origins as a liberal art in ancient Greece?

The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction tells the 2,500-year story, exploring the changing place and purpose of physics in different cultures; highlighting the implications for humankind’s self-understanding. It introduces Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the Earth’s size; medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. It visits: the House of Wisdom in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe’s first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and 18th-century academies; and the increasingly specialized world of 20th‒21st-century science.

Published: January 2018 | ISBN: 9780199684120

Mini-bio: John Lewis Heilbron is an American historian of science best known for his work in the history of physics and the history of astronomy. Wikipedia