物理学史与哲学

In his interviews with Eckermann in the 1820s, Goethe referred to his Theory of Colors as his greatest and ultimate achievement. Its reception following publication in 1810 and subsequent reviews throughout the history of physical science…

In this paper Einstein develops some crucial ideas about superconductivity

For readers interested in the history of chiral symmetry we present the translation of two papaers from 1955 and 1959 from German to English, in which chiral symmetry properties for weak and strong interactions have been postulated and…

We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…

Multiverse scenarios are common place in contemporary high energy physics and cosmology, although many consider them simply as bold speculations. In any case there is nothing like a single theory or a unified model of the multiverse.…

It is curious to learn that Enrico Fermi knew how to base probabilistic inference on Bayes theorem, and that some influential notes on statistics for physicists stem from what the author calls elsewhere, but never in these notes, {\it the…

Einstein is usually revered as the father of special and general relativity. In this article I demonstrate that he is also the father of Solid State Physics, or even his broader version known as Condensed Matter Physics (including liquids).…

We commemorate 50 years from A. Proca's death. Proca equation is a relativistic wave equation for a massive spin-1 particle. The weak interaction is transmitted by such kind of vector bosons. Also vector fields are used to describe spin-1…

This article focuses on the reception among physicists of Bohm's 1952 papers on the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, which were poorly received at the time. I describe his Brazilian exile and analyze the culture of physics…

This paper deals with the ways that the issue of completing quantum mechanics was brought into laboratories and became a topic in mainstream quantum optics. It focuses on the period between 1965, when Bell published what now we call Bell's…

Birkhoff showed in 1923 that the Schwarzschild solution for the metric from a point particle was also valid in the a priori non-static case as long as the spherical symmetry was maintained. This theorem was actually discovered and published…

I review some of the scientific work of George Papadopoulos in the context of the Greek cultural tradition and modern theoretical physics. The main emphasis is on his works on path integrals and their applications. The review is closed by…

In 1929 Lanczos showed how to derive Dirac's equation from a more fundamental system that predicted that spin 1/2 particles should come in pairs. Today, these pairs can unambiguously be interpreted as isospin doublets. From the same…

We show that in the new description, Dirac's ``current vector'' is not related to a vector but to a tensor: the ``stress-energy tensor.'' Corresponding to Dirac's conservation law, we have the conservation laws of momentum and energy. The…

As a continuation of previous investigations, the formalism used there is extended to the case when an external electric field is present and the covariant formulation is performed again. The equation system obtained allows no restriction…

Editorial note: In this lecture, held at the meeting of the Berlin Physical Society, October 25, 1929, Lanczos discusses a nonlinear generalization of Proca's equation (derived from his ``fundamental equation'') such that the mass is…

Dirac's equation of the electron will be discussed by using quaternions as the basis of a new formalism which seems to be very well adapted to the problem. The transformation properties of the equations as well as the invariant and…

We recall the early theoretical speculations on the possible explosive uses of antimatter, from 1946 to the first production of antiprotons, at Berkeley in 1955, and until the first capture of cold antiprotons, at CERN on July 17-18, 1986,…

Einstein's contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory are reviewed. We also provide a detailed discussion of his thesis on suspensions that led to a good value of the Avogadro number.

Starting with Einstein's famous papers of 1905, we review some of the ensuing developments and their impact on present-day physics. We attempt to cover topics that are of interest to historians and philosophers of science as well as to…