Related papers: Editing Cavendish: Maxwell and The Electrical Rese…
In 1877 James Clerk Maxwell and his student Donald MacAlister refined Henry Cavendish's 1773 null experiment demonstrating the absence of electricity inside a charged conductor. This null result was a mathematical prediction of the inverse…
James Clerk Maxwell is known for his outstanding contributions to fundamental physics. These include providing the equations that govern electric and magnetic fields, establishing the basis of modern colourimetry, finding important…
Maxwell's equations describe the relation of charge and electric force almost perfectly even though electrons and permanent charge were not in his equations, as he wrote them. For Maxwell, all charge depended on electric field. Charge was…
In the scientific literature the equation $Q=\{Q\}[Q]$ is frequently quoted, where $Q$ denotes a quantity, $\{Q\}$ a numerical value, and $[Q]$ a unit. During the last years some experts claimed, that this equation is due to James Clerk…
In 1861, James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism and light. Today physicists are trying to unify everthing else theoretically as well as experimentally with a view to develop a fundamental theory.
The experiment performed by Henry Cavendish to measure the density of the earth, is in numerous textbooks described as a measurement of the universal gravitational constant, G, even if we know that this was not true. In this paper, a study…
The use of computers and the role of women in radio astronomy and X-ray crystallography research at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1949 and 1975 have been investigated. We recorded examples of when computers were used, what they were used…
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) made important contributions to the study of atmospheric electricity during a brief but productive period from 1859-1861. By 1859 Kelvin had recognised the need for "incessant recording" of atmospheric…
The relation between entropy and information dates back to the classical Maxwell demon (MD) paradox, a thought experiment proposed in 1867 by J. C. Maxwell to violate the second law of thermodynamics. A variant of the classical MD is the…
The historical background of the 19th century electromagnetic theory is revisited from the standpoint of the opposition between alternative approaches in respect to the problem of interactions. The 19th century electrodynamics became the…
In 1988, in cooperation with a team of experimental physicists, a Condensed Matter theorist, X, published in Physical Review Letters a crucial experimental result dealing with a revolutionary new theory. The conclusions of the paper were…
The thesis developed by Cornelius Lanczos in his doctoral dissertation is that electrodynamics is a pure field theory which is hyperanalytic over the algebra of biquaternions. In this theory Maxwell's homogeneous equations correspond to a…
A review of Jaynes' posthumous book "Probability Theory--The Logic of Science." I use scientific and personality elements gathered from other papers by Jaynes to help throw light on the origins of Jaynes' life quest.
This paper completes a three-part study of Einstein's 1905 special relativity by reconstructing the experimental pressures that shaped his thinking from 1895 to June 1905. Following Stachel's historiographical line, I trace Einstein's path…
The discovery of Electromagnetism by Oersted (1820) started an 'extraordinary decennium' ended by the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Faraday (1831). During this decennium, in several experiments, the electromagnetic induction was…
As documented by textbooks, the teaching of electromagnetic induction in university and high school courses is primarily based on what Feynman labeled as the ``flux rule'', downgrading it from the status of physical law. However, Maxwell…
The relation between the theory of entanglement and thermodynamics is very tight: a thermodynamic theory of quantum entanglement, as well as the establishment of rigorous formal connections between the laws of thermodynamics and the…
We discuss a previously unpublished description of electromagnetism outlined by Richard P. Feynman in the 1960s in five handwritten pages, recently uncovered among his papers, and partly developed in later lectures. Though similar to the…
My thesis describes the life and work of the mathematician Major Percy Alexander MacMahon (1854-1929). His early life as as a soldier in the Royal Artillery and the events which led to him embarking on a career in mathematical research and…
From 1837, when he returned to England aboard the $\textit{HMS Beagle}$, to 1860, just after publication of $\textit{The Origin of Species}$, Charles Darwin kept detailed notes of each book he read or wanted to read. His notes and…