Related papers: Steven Weinberg: A Scientific Life
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
This brief article presents the introduction and draft of the fundamental ideas developed at length in the book of the same title, which gives a challenging point of view about science and its history/philosophy/sociology. Science is in…
Lev Davidovich Landau was arguably one of the greatest and most versatile physicists. His work spans a very wide range and has had a considerable impact on all areas of physics including condensed matter physics, plasma, high energy and…
Edwin Hubble is famous for a number of discoveries that are well known to amateur and professional astronomers, students and the general public. The origins of these discoveries are examined and it is demonstrated that, in each case, a…
Publicly available data reveal long-term systematic features about citation statistics and how papers are referenced. The data also tell fascinating citation histories of individual articles.
In the new millennium hypernuclear physics is undergoing a renewed interest, both theoretically and experimentally.
Rather than offering chronologically ordered encyclopedic knowledge of a lifetime, only some of the most striking events of the existence of this well-known scientist are here pointed out. Sections: Life; Man of laws; Interest in…
This is a popular lecture about the history of gravitational wave research. Without any doubt, the discovery of gravitational waves is the most important event in the physics of the last decade along with the discovery of the Higgs boson.…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…
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…
The consequences of the Nazi-power for the scientific process are described qualitatively in various articles and books. However, recent progress in information systems allows a quantitative reflection. Literature databases ranging back to…
The nature of gravity is fundamental to our understanding of our own solar system, the galaxy and the structure and evolution of the Universe. Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard model that is used for almost ninety…
Based on a Planck scale underpinning for the universe, we deduce an expression for the gravitational constant which exhibits it as a distributional effect over all the particles of the universe. This solves a long standing puzzle, the so…
Are we smarter now than Socrates was in his time? Society as a whole certainly enjoys a higher degree of education, but humans as a species probably don't get intrinsically smarter with time. Our knowledge base, however, continues to grow…
The present study focuses on persistence in research productivity over the course of an individual's entire scientific career. We track 'late-career' scientists - scientists with at least 25 years of publishing experience (N=320,564) - in…
This is a brief introduction to the life and ideas of the Lithuanian-German physicist, philosopher and religious thinker Max B. Weinstein, who is today best known for his thoughts concerning so-called pandeism. An accomplished theoretical…
The full story of the Stern-Gerlach experiment and its reception, interpretation and final understanding has many unexpected surprises. Here, we review the history and the context of the proposal, the experiment, and the subsequent story of…
In 2012, Chen Ning Yang received a 90th birthday gift in the form of a black cube inscribed with his 13 most important contributions, which cover four major areas of physics: statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, particle physics…
The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…
We stand at the foot of a significant inflection in the trajectory of scientific discovery. As society continues on its fast-paced digital transformation, so does humankind's collective scientific knowledge and discourse. We now read and…