Related papers: On the first Solvay Congress in 1911
Classes started in the newly established Physics Department of Calcutta University Science College in 1916. Raman, Bose and Saha were three young members of the small physics faculty consisting of barely half a dozen faculty members. Within…
At the end of the 19th century light was regarded as an electromagnetic wave propagating in a material medium called ether. The speed c appearing in Maxwell's wave equations was the speed of light with respect to the ether. Therefore,…
It is shown as experiments and theories about the nature of light led to the special theory of relativity. The most important facts for the emergence of the theory proposed by Einstein in 1905 are presented.
In 1907, Einstein suggested an experiment with flying atoms for corroborating time dilation. In that paper, the flying atom was conceived as a flying clock: the reference to the Doppler effect was only indirect (the experiments by Stark to…
I discuss Albert Einstein's 1914 review paper, "The Formal Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" from two points of view: the main elements in the paper that appear to have led to the downfall of the Einstein-Grossman theory; and…
It took eight years after Einstein announced the basic physical ideas behind the relativistic gravity theory before the proper mathematical formulation of general relativity was mastered. The efforts of the greatest physicist and of the…
The first comprehensive overview of the final version of the general theory of relativity was published by Einstein in 1916 after several expositions of preliminary versions and latest revisions of the theory in November 1915. A historical…
We recount the successful long career of classical physics, from Newton to Einstein, which was based on the philosophy of scientific realism. Special emphasis is given to the changing status and number of ontological entitities and…
Since its inception, quantum theory has been the subject of fierce interpretive controversy, which persists to this day. Disputed topics include the basic ontology and dynamics of the theory, the role (if any) of measurement, the meaning of…
During the last few decades scientists have been able to test the bases of the physics paradigms, where the quantum mechanics has to match the cosmological scales. Between the extremes of this scenario, biological phenomena and their…
The interplay between optical and statistical physics is a rich and exciting field of study. Black body radiation was the first application of photon statistics, although it was initially treated as a problem of the cavity oscillators in…
A brief review of Heisenberg's life and work: participating in the youth movement in the aftermath of World War I, creating quantum mechanics, conflict with "deutsche Physik", involvement in "Hitler's Uranium Project", last illusions.…
In this Einstein Year of Physics it seems appropriate to look at an important aspect of Einstein's work that is often down-played: his contribution to the debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Contrary to popular opinion, Bohr…
This historical essay describes the struggle to understand how the sun shines. The story begins with the disagreement between Kelvin and Darwin over the age of the sun in the middle of the 19th century and continues through the revelations…
The purpose of this work is to retrace the steps that were made by scientists of XX century, like Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, for the formulation of what today represents the modern quantum mechanics and that, within two…
The cosmic ray conference at Bagn`eres de Bigorre in July, 1953 organized by Patrick Blackett and Louis Leprince-Ringuet was a seminal one. It marked the beginning of sub atomic physics and its shift from cosmic ray research to research at…
In an article published by Mauricio Nirenstein in 1925, a few months after the visit of Albert Einstein to Argentina, the author wrote various comments and references relative to the scientist's visit. In particular, Nirenstein mentioned a…
Einstein was the first to explore the inertial mass-energy equivalence. In 1905 Einstein showed that a change in energy is associated with a change in inertial mass equal to the change in energy divided by c2. In 1900 Poincar\'e considered…
In 1923 Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) discovered the material waves and six years later received the Nobel price for this discovery. Apart these well known facts this French physicist nevertheless seems to be forgotten. Details of his life…
Modern attempts to understand light go back to Newton who considered light to be particles, the so called corpuscular theory, and the other school of Huygens, Young and others. Huygens and Young viewpoint emphasised the wave property. This…