Readings

Required Texts

McCormmach, Russell. Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780674624610.

Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2000. ISBN: 9780385720793.

Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons: From Fission to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1939-1963. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Press, 1995. ISBN: 9781573925389.

Reading Assignments

Course readings.
LEC #	TOPICS	READING ASSIGNMENTS
I. Introduction and Background
1	Introductory Lecture	Begin reading McCormmach, Russell. Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist. (To be completed by Lec #3.)
2	Maxwell, Electrodynamics, and Cambridge Wranglers	Maxwell, James Clerk. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Vol. 1. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1954, pp. v-xii and 155-68. ISBN: 9780486606361. Hunt, Bruce J. The Maxwellians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991, pp. 73-107. ISBN: 9780801426414.
II. Einstein: Relativity, Quanta, and the Philosopher-Scientist
3	Mechanical and Electrodynamical World Pictures	Finish reading McCormmach, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist.
4	Special Relativity and the Ether	Einstein, Albert. "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies." Translated and reprinted in Miller, Arthur I. Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980, pp. 392-6. ISBN: 9780201046809. Galison, Peter, and David Kaiser. "Special relativity primer." 2nd ed. (Unpublished manuscript, 2006 [1998].)
5	Einstein and Experiment	Holton, Gerald. "Mach, Einstein, and the search for reality." In Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1973 [1988], pp. 237-77. ISBN: 9780674877481. Galison, Peter. "Einstein's clocks: The place of time." Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000): 355-89.
6	The Reception of Special Relativity	Warwick, Andrew. "Cambridge mathematics and Cavendish physics: Cunningham, Campbell, and Einstein's relativity, 1905-1911. Part I: The uses of theory." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992): 625-56.
7	The Origins of General Relativity	Einstein, Albert. "What is the theory of relativity?" In Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions. Edited by Carl Seelig. New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 1954, pp. 227-32. ISBN: 9780756762506. Kaiser, David. "General relativity primer." 2nd ed. (Unpublished manuscript, 2006 [1998].) Graham, Loren. "The Reception of Einstein's ideas: Two examples from contrasting political cultures." In Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Gerald Holton and Yehudah Elkana. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 107-36. ISBN: 9780691082998.
8	Rethinking Light	Kuhn, Thomas. "Revisiting Planck." Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14 (1984): 231-52. Gordin, Michael, and David Kaiser. Quantum Mechanics Primer. 2nd ed. pp. 1-16. (Unpublished manuscript, 2006 [1998].)
9	Rethinking Matter	Gordin, Michael, and David Kaiser. Quantum Mechanics Primer. pp. 16-32.
10	Matrices and Uncertainty	Heisenberg, Werner. "Quantum-theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations." Translated and Reprinted in Sources of Quantum Mechanics. Edited by B. L. van der Waerden. New York, NY: Dover, 1968, pp. 261-6. ISBN: 9780486618814. Cassidy, David. "Heisenberg, uncertainty, and the quantum revolution." Scientific American 266 (May 1992): 106-12. Gordin, Michael, and David Kaiser. Quantum Mechanics Primer. pp. 32-42.
11	Waves and Probabilities	Bohr, Niels. "The Bohr-Einstein Dialogue." In Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Edited by A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 121-40. ISBN: 9780674624160. Gordin, Michael, and David Kaiser. Quantum Mechanics Primer. pp. 42-52.
12	Quantum Mechanics in Weimar Germany, Interwar U.S.	Forman, Paul. "Weimar culture, causality, and quantum theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile intellectual environment." In Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief. Edited by Colin Chant and John Fauvel. New York, NY: Longman, 1980, pp. 267-302. ISBN: 9780582491564. Assmus, Alexi. "The Americanization of molecular physics." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 23 (1992): 1-34.
13	In-class Mid-term Examination	Begin reading Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. (To be completed by Lec #15.)
III. Oppenheimer: Physics, Physicists, and the State
14	Nuclear Physics in the 1930s; From Europe to America	Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1987 [1978], pp. 222-35 and 282-6.
15	Physics under Hitler: deutsche Physik and the Bomb	Frank, Charles ed. The Farm Hall Transcripts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 70-91. Carson, Cathryn. "Placing Frayn's play in the historical tradition." Lecture delivered at the Niels Bohr Archive, 22-23 September 2001. Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen.
16	Physics in the U.S.: Radar and the Atomic Bomb	Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons. pp. 27-47. Serber, Robert, and Robert Crease. Peace and War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998, pp. 121-44. ISBN: 9780231105460.
17	Film: The Day After Trinity	Smyth, Henry DeWolf. Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 206-26. ISBN: 9780804717229. Oppenheimer, J. Robert. "Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, November 2, 1945." In Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections. Edited by Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 315-25. ISBN: 9780674776067.
18	McCarthyism and the Oppenheimer Hearing	Polenberg, Richard, ed. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001, pp. 94-111. ISBN: 9780801486616. Kaiser, David. "The atomic secret in red hands? American suspicions of theoretical physicists during the early Cold War." Representations 90 (2005): 28-60. Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons. pp. 63-79 and 102-8.
19	Film: The Decision to Build the H-Bomb	"The GAC Report of October 30, 1949." Reprinted in Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989 [1976], pp. 153-62. ISBN: 9780804717144. Bernstein, Jeremy. "The need to know." In Asymptotic Realms of Physics: Essays in Honor of Francis E. Low. Edited by Alan H. Guth, Kerson Huang, and Robert L. Jaffe. Cambridge, UK: MIT Press, 1983, pp. xvii-xxiv. ISBN: 9780262070898. Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons. pp. 48-62 and 80-88.
20	The Rise of Big Science	Morrison, Philip. "The laboratory demobilizes." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2 (Nov 1946): 5-6. Kaiser, David. "Francis E. Low: Coming of age as a physicist in postwar America." Physics@MIT 14 (2001): 24-31 and 70-7. ———. "The postwar suburbanization of American physics." American Quarterly 56 (2004): 851-888.
IV. Feynman and Postwar Theory
21	The Conservative Revolution: QED and Renormalization	Feynman, Richard. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 77-101. ISBN: 9780691024172. Kaiser, David. "Physics and Feynman's Diagrams." American Scientist 93 (2005): 156-165.
22	The Challenge to Field Theory	Chew, Geoffrey. "Impasse for the elementary-particle concept." In The Sciences Today. Edited by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler. New York, NY: Arno, 1976 [1974], pp. 366-99. ISBN: 9780405071713. Kaiser, David. "Nuclear democracy: Political engagement, pedagogical reform, and particle physics in postwar America." Isis 93 (2002): 229-268.
23	Quarks, Gauge Fields, and the Rise of the Standard Model	Fritzsch, Harald. Quarks: The Stuff of Matter. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1989, pp. 47-87 and 123-37. ISBN: 9780465067848.
24	Big Bang vs. Steady-State Cosmology	Hoyle, Fred. The Nature of the Universe. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1955, pp. 133-42. ISBN: 9780451604095. Kragh, Helge. "Big Bang cosmology." In Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives. Edited by Norriss Hetherington. New York, NY: Routledge, 1993, 371-89. ISBN: 9780815309345. ———. "Steady state theory." In Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives. Edited by Norriss Hetherington. New York, NY: Routledge, 1993, pp. 391-404. ISBN: 9780815309345.
25	Inflation and Superstrings	Guth, Alan, and David Kaiser. "Inflationary cosmology: Exploring the universe from the smallest to the largest scales." Science 307 (February 11, 2005): 884-890. Galison, Peter. "Theory bound and unbound: Superstrings and experiment." In Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific, and Historical Dimensions. Edited by Friedel Weinert. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 369-408. ISBN: 9783110139181.
26	Course Summary