{"title":"Quantum mechanics, radiation, and the equivalence proof","authors":"Alexander Blum, Martin Jähnert","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00334-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00334-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper re-evaluates the formative year of quantum mechanics—from Heisenberg’s first paper on matrix mechanics to Schrödinger’s equivalence proof—by focusing on the role of radiation in the emerging theory. We argue that the radiation problem played a key role in early quantum mechanics, a role that has not been taken into account in the standard histories. Radiation was perceived by the main protagonists of matrix and wave mechanics as a central lacuna in these emerging theories and continued to contribute to the theoretical development and conceptual clarification of quantum mechanics. Studying the interplay between quantum mechanics and radiation, the paper provides an account of (a) how quantum mechanics was able to connect to its empirical basis in spectroscopy and (b) how Schrödinger’s equivalence proof emerged from his explorative calculations on the emission of radiation.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141550235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The turbulence theory of P. Wehrlé and G. Dedebant (1934–1948): a forgotten probabilistic approach?","authors":"Antonietta Demuro","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00332-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00332-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The development of the statistical theory of turbulence mainly take places between 1920 and 1940, in a context where emerging theories in fluid mechanics are striving to provide results closer to experimentation and applicable to practical fluid problems. The secondary literature on the history of fluid mechanics has often emphasized the importance of the contributions of Prandtl, Taylor, and von Kármán to the closure problem of Reynolds equations for a turbulent fluid confined by walls and to the statistical description of an isotropic and homogeneous turbulent flow. During the same period, a new theory of turbulence also surfaces in France. This theory is formulated by a group of researchers led by Philippe Wehrlé (1890–1965), the director of the French National Meteorological Office (Office national météorologique, ONM), and Georges Dedebant (1902–1965), the head of ONM’s Scientific Service. Their objective is to mathematically formalize the turbulence, taking into account the atmospheric turbulence and using a theory of random functions defined from experimental concepts. However, this French theory of turbulence gradually loses international recognition after World War II. After introducing the key figures and the fundamental components of their theory, the article explores various scientific factors why their contribution was increasingly forgotten after the Second World War.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141508836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A quantitative analysis of David Fabricius’ astronomical observations","authors":"H. Grecco, Christián C. Carman","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00333-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00333-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141337756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Free-energy calculations in condensed matter: from early challenges to the advent of umbrella sampling","authors":"Daniele Macuglia","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00327-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00327-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141353759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The practice of principles: Planck’s vision of a relativistic general dynamics","authors":"Marco Giovanelli","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00326-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00326-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Planck’s pioneering contributions to special relativity have received less consideration than one might expect in the historiography and philosophy of physics. Although they are celebrated in isolation, they are mostly not understood as integral to an overarching project. This paper aims (a) to provide a historically accurate overview of Planck’s contributions to the early history of relativity that is reasonably accessible to today’s reader, (b) to demonstrate how these contributions can be presented against the background of Planck’s ‘Helmholtzian’ vision of relativistic general dynamics based on the principle of relativity and principle of least action, and (c) to argue that Planck’s general dynamics serves as an illuminating example of the use of ‘principles’ in physics.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141193314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Felix Klein’s early contributions to anschauliche Geometrie","authors":"David E. Rowe","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00329-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00329-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Between 1873 and 1876, Felix Klein published a series of papers that he later placed under the rubric <i>anschauliche Geometrie</i> in the second volume of his collected works (1922). The present study attempts not only to follow the course of this work, but also to place it in a larger historical context. Methodologically, Klein’s approach had roots in Poncelet’s principle of continuity, though the more immediate influences on him came from his teachers, Plücker and Clebsch. In the 1860s, Clebsch reworked some of the central ideas in Riemann’s theory of Abelian functions to obtain complicated results for systems of algebraic curves, most published earlier by Hesse and Steiner. These findings played a major role in enumerative geometry, whereas Plücker’s work had a strongly qualitative character that imbued Klein’s early studies. A leitmotif in these works can be seen in the interplay between real curves and surfaces as reflected by their transformational properties. During the early 1870s, Klein and Zeuthen began to explore the possibility of deriving all possible forms for real cubic surfaces as well as quartic curves. They did so using continuity methods reminiscent of Poncelet’s earlier approach. Both authors also relied on visual arguments, which Klein would later advance under the banner of intuitive geometry (<i>anschauliche Geometrie</i>).</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141153550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Antonio Signorini and the proto-history of the non-linear theory of elasticity","authors":"Giuseppe Saccomandi, Maurizio Stefano Vianello","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00328-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00328-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Antonio Signorini’s contribution to the constitutive theory of non-linear elasticity is reconstructed and analyzed. Some uninformed opinions suggesting he had a minor role, lacking of significant results, are discussed and refuted. It is shown that Signorini should be rightly credited for being among the first scholars aware of the central problem of non-linear elasticity: the determination of the general form of the elastic potential.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141062930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hipparchus’ selenelion and two pairs of lunar eclipses revisited","authors":"S. Mohammad Mozaffari","doi":"10.1007/s00407-024-00330-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-024-00330-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140967890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ibn al-Zarqālluh’s discovery of the annual equation of the Moon","authors":"S. Mohammad Mozaffari","doi":"10.1007/s00407-023-00323-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-023-00323-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ibn al-Zarqālluh (al-Andalus, d. 1100) introduced a new inequality in the longitudinal motion of the Moon into Ptolemy’s lunar model with the amplitude of 24′, which periodically changes in terms of a sine function with the distance in longitude between the mean Moon and the solar apogee as the variable. It can be shown that the discovery had its roots in his examination of the discrepancies between the times of the lunar eclipses he obtained from the data of his eclipse observations over a 37-year period in the latter part of the eleventh century and the predictions made on the basis of the lunar theories in the <i>Mumta</i><span>(textit{d{h}})</span><i>an zīj</i> (Baghdad, <i>ca.</i> 830) and al-Battānī’s <i>zīj</i> (Raqqa, d. 929), which were available to him at the time. What Ibn al-Zarqālluh found is, in fact, a special case of the annual equation of the Moon, which is applicable in the oppositions and, thus, in the lunar eclipses. The inequality was discovered independently by Tycho Brahe (d. 1601) and Johannes Kepler (d. 1630). As Ibn Yūnus (d. 1009) reports in his <span>(textit{d{H}})</span><i>ākimī zīj</i>, Ibn al-Zarqālluh’s medieval Middle Eastern predecessors, the Persian astronomers Māhānī (d. <i>ca.</i> 880) and Nayrīzī (d. 922) as well as ‘Alī b. Amājūr (<i>fl. ca.</i> 920), were already acquainted with the problem of the eclipse timing errors, but it had remained unresolved until Ibn Yūnus provided a provisional, and incorrect, solution by reducing the size of the lunar epicycle. As we argue, the diverse ways to tackle the same problem stem from two different methodologies in astronomical reasoning in the traditions developed separately in the Eastern and Western regions of the medieval Islamic domain.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The new moon interval NA and the beginning of the Babylonian month","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s00407-023-00325-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-023-00325-x","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>This study examines Babylonian records of the new moon interval NA (sunset to moonset on the day of first lunar visibility) and the connection of this interval to the length of the moon. I show that the NA intervals in the Normal Star Almanacs were computed using the goal-year method and were then used in turn to predict the lengths of each month of the year. I further argue that these predicted month lengths, adjusted occasionally on the basis of observation in cases where the moon’s visibility was considered marginal, formed the basis of the Late Babylonian calendar.</p>","PeriodicalId":50982,"journal":{"name":"Archive for History of Exact Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}