物理学史与哲学

During the past one hundred years three related elementary particles - the electron, the muon, and the tau - were discovered by very different scientific techniques. The author, who received the Wolf Prize and the Nobel Prize for the…

Hilbert's paper on ``The Foundations of Physics (First Communication),'' is now primarily known for its parallel publication of essentially the same gravitational field equations of general relativity which Einstein published in a note on…

The great Vishnu temple at Angkor Wat in north-central Kampuchea (Cambodia) is known to have been built according to an astronomical plan. In this note we show that the little-understood solar formula of the temple is identical to the one…

The question of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays has long been debated. The two leading contenders are W. Shakspere (1564-1616) and Edward de Vere the 13th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604). Here I note that Shakespeare's references to…

During the 80's, some experiments and the repetitions of old ones, lead to the hypothesis of a fifth force. Nevertheless, a more accurate research was not able to confirm this hypothesis. This article wants to go over again the most…

Although we accept that Physics is, as a last resort, an experimental science, the relationship between theory and experiment is far away from being trivial. Any experiment is always explained within a determinate theoretical context and,…

Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between symmetries and conservation laws. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract…

The unexpected discoveries at the beginning of the century, particularly thanks to Heisenberg, Bohr, and Godel, has driven the science to drastic changes, opening new, extraordinary, and infinite research fields. After this, many scientists…

According to an ancient Indian text (c. 1700 BC?), the heavens are 1000 earth diameters away from the earth. Other texts took the sun to be halfway to the heavens, so this suggests a distance of the sun about 500 earth diameters from the…

We survey early Indian ideas on the speed of light and the size of the universe. A context is provided for Sayana's statement (14th century)that the speed is 2,202 yojanas per half nimesha (186,000 miles per second!). It is shown how this…

This paper gives a short review of the history of statistical physics starting from D. Bernoulli's kinetic theory of gases in the 18th century until the recent new developments in nonequilibrium kinetic theory in the last decades of this…

Quantum electrodynamics is the well-accepted theory. However, we feel it is useful to look at formalisms that provide alternative ways to describe light, because in the recent years the development of quantum field theories based primarily…

In memoria of Vladimir Naumovich Gribov

In two respects Ludwig Boltzmann was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. First because in his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics he introduced the theory of probability into a fundamental law of physics and thus…

The historical roots of the word plasma are recalled. It is suggested that possibly at the beginning of the researches in low-pressure gas discharges the driving motivation was related to the psychic phenomena investigated by Sir William…

Remarks at the Irving Kaplansky Memorial about a collaboration during the early period of the renewal of contacts between mathematicians and theoretical physicists.

Giulio Racah's name is known world wide in physics due to the mathematical methods he developed that are based on tensor operators and continuous groups. These methods revolutionized spectroscopy, and they are currently essential research…

Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997) formulated the dilemma that carries his name in an attempt to determine the boundaries of physics. Where does physics go over into metaphysics? The purpose of this contribution is to indicate how a recently…

This paper is the second in series of the Indian physics of the Nyaya-Vaisheshika school. It is significant that the school defines matter not in terms of something gross that is anchored to the commonsensical notion of an object, but…

In this study the amount of informal citations (i.e. those mentioning only author names or their initials instead of the complete references) in comparison to the formal (full reference based) citations is analyzed using some pioneers of…