E=mc2

by David Bodanis

  Humphry Davy: Science and Power, by David M. Knight (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1992) is crisply analytic on Faraday's troubled mentor, and on the indispensable role the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge played in shuttling Kant's ideas to Davy and then to Faraday. He also shows the way British scientists were often disposed to believe in mysterious powers—as with Faraday's God-granted unities— to distinguish themselves from the extreme materialists in France, whose research was held to have helped justify the Terror in the French Revolution. For a more flowing account of Faraday and Davy, try The Mercurial Chemist, by Anne Treneer (London: Methuen, 1963).

  Faraday was far from being the only individual active in developing the conservation of energy. Thomas Kuhn has a famous essay about it, "Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery," in his The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). Kuhn doesn't just vaguely note that conservation was "in the air," but shows the role of the era's many new-fangled industrial machines as a source of metaphors, as well as the importance of the many newly practical technologies for converting between types of energy. The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain, by Cros-bie Smith (London: Athlone Press, 1998) takes a different approach, looking, for example, at the minutiae of Scottish theology and its patronage networks, and how the less stratified social structure there naturally brought engineers, professors, and theologians into a powerfully cross-fertilizing contact.

  The extrascientific motivations of the seminal Hans Christian Oersted are explored in R. C. Stauffer, "Speculation and Experiment in the Background of Oersted's Discovery of Electromagnetism," Isis, 48 (1957), and, if you can bear wading through hundreds of pages of treacle, there are Oersted's own writings. Gerald Holton's essay "The Two Maps" (in his The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986, 1998], pp. 197-208) is excellent on the significance of Oersted's being misunderstood.

  For a closer look at the science of energy as it has ramified today, the oddly indirect operational definition that has been so useful is made clear in Chapter 3 ("The Great Conservation Principles") of The Character of Physical Law (London: Penguin UK, 1992), a transcript of BBC-recorded Cornell lectures by the ever-ebullient Richard Feynman. The notion of entropy is analyzed—with steadily increasing order—in Peter Atkins's estimable The Second Law: Energy, Chaos, and Form (New York: Scientific American Books, 1984,1994), a text excellent at showing the reasoning that led to seeing a further level of structure in energy's operations. (The chapter where he shows how the life we're used to is just a brief stopping point in the full temperature scale of the universe is a masterpiece.) For if we can understand the disorder we call heat, then we should be able to understand the opposite of disorder, which could be called "information." Neil Gershenfeld's The Physics of Information Technology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) is at a more advanced level than Atkins, but strongly recommended for anyone interested in exploring this furthermost ramification of the Victorian energy concepts.

  Lavoisier and Mass

  Lavoisier found a graceful biographer in Arthur Donovan, with his Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1993). Jean-Pierre Poirier wrote a more comprehensive book, Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist (English translation) (College Park, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania, 1996), but it's harder to read straight through. For more than thirty years, Robert Darn-ton has been probing life under polite society's surface in France around the period when Lavoisier worked, and his Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) is excellent for background, especially on the popular attitudes that proved to be fatal for Lavoisier later on. For Marat I'd go back to the brief account Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism (orig. 1927, reissued Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) by the then young Louis Gottschalk. Readers near a large library, and with even a little French, will be gripped by the firsthand accounts of the imprisonment and trial, in Adrien Delahante, Une famille de finance au XVIIIe siecle, 2 vols (Paris, 1881).

  Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield's The Architecture of Matter (London: Hutchinson, 1962) is especially thoughtful in disentangling some of the attitudes of Lavoisier's time, while the classic The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800, by Herbert Butterfield (orig. London, 1949) take a more no-nonsense frontal approach. A more physics-oriented history, bringing the story into the twentieth century, is Max Jammer's Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics (New York: Dover, 1997), which includes such nutritious tidbits as the plausibilities behind the suggestion that the word mass originated in the Hebrew word matzoh; also the links between mass conservation, and the vision of quantitas mataeriae, or "quantity of matter," which Aquinas's followers had used to resolve the problems of what actually happens during transubstantiation in the Catholic mass.

  Of the recent approaches, Frederic Holmes is always fresh, as in "The Boundaries of Lavoisier's Chemical Revolution," in Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, 48 (1995), pp. 9-48. Maurice Crosland's chapter "Chemistry and the Chemical Revolution" in The Ferment of Knowledge, George S. Rousseau, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980) is good on what Lavoisier was likely to be thinking during his metal experiments. Try also Perrin's essay "The Chemical Revolution: Shifts in Guiding Assumptions," pp. 53-81 in The Chemical Revolution: Essays in Reinterpretation (special issue of Osiris, 2nd series, 1988).

  The question of what mass "really" is brings us to the concept from modern physics of the Higgs field, for which Lucifer's Legacy—The Meaning of Asymmetry, by Frank Close (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) is one excellent start, while Gerard 't Hooft's In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) gives even wider background, deftly tracking the story through the author's own schooling and professional puzzlements (though modesty—plus the annoying lack of efficient time-travel—forbade his mentioning the story's culmination, for now, in his own Nobel Prize).

  "c"

  Galileo lived in a time when science hadn't fully separated out from philosophy or literature, which means that today's nonspecialist can have the treat of entering into his major works directly: great chunks of his Two New Sciences are immensely attractive to read. I. B. Cohen's old article "Roemer and the First Determination of the Velocity of Light," Isis, 31,1940, pp. 327-79, expands the story of what Cassini had to put up with, while a skillful update, including points on the caution against straying from hard empiricism that Cassini had to follow due to working in a Catholic country in the century of Galileo's persecution, is in "The Galilean satellites of Jupiter from Galileo to Cassini, Romer, and Bradley," by Suzanne Debarbat and Curtis Wilson in The General History of Astronomy, Vol. 2, Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton, eds. Rene Taton and Curtis Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 144-157. Timothy Ferris's Coming of Age in the Milky Way (New York: William Morrow, 1988) puts that within an even wider setting; his book is the ideal introduction to the history of astronomy.

  Maxwell found a suitably wry biographer in Martin Goldman, The Demon in the Aether: The Story of James Clerk Maxwell (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing; with Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1983). To go with that I'd recommend Chapter 11 ("Gentleman of Energy: the Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell") in Crosbie Smith's Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (London: Athlone Press, 1998) as a place to start. As with Ferris, excellent explanations are mixed with pleasing anecdotes; we even find Maxwell's reflections (heartening to any Oxford author) on his education in Cambridge:

  Like a plucked and skinny goose . . . I

  Asked myself with voice unsteady,

  If of all the stuff I read, I

  Ever made the slightest use.

  Where Maxwell's science comes alive to the g
eneral reader is in many of his introductions and commentaries on the major works. Excellent samples are "A Historical Survey of Theories on Action at a Distance," and "Experiment on Lines of Force," conveniently available in Physical Thought: An Anthology, ed. Shmuel Sambursky (London: Hutchinson, 1974). The 1890 edition of Maxwell's papers is superseded by The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. P. M. Harman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 1995). For overviews, Harman's classic Energy, Force, and Matter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) might be compared with Robert D. Purring-ton's even more finely honed Physics in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997).

  Innovation in Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory, by Daniel Siegel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), takes a very detailed, at times polemical, look at the process of Maxwell's creativity, including revealing contrasts with the overtheoretical French tradition; Christine M. Crow's Paul Valery and Maxwell's Demon: Natural Order and Human Possibility (Hull, England: University of Hull Publications, 1972) brings out rich insights from a different examination of the French tradition. Richard Feynman would have had little use for Valery or most historians, which is a pity, but for exploring the actual science of light, his writing (and research) has had few peers: along with the physics texts in the next entry, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, by Richard Feynman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985) is a fine start.

  Du Châtelet and "Squared"

  Du Châtelet hasn't been favored by her English language biographers, but readers with some French are in for a treat. Elisabeth Badinter had the excellent idea of doing a comparative biography of Emilie du Châtelet and Madame d'Épinay, and her Émilie, Émilie: l'ambition feminine au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Flamarrion, 1983) is a fast-paced, well thought out pairing of psychological portraits.

  Les Lettres de la Marquise du Châtelet, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1958), ed. T. Besterman shows du Châtelet at ease, often being funny in the way clever screenwriters are funny—but then she'll shift, almost from one sentence to the next, to a genuine puzzlement about how an observation she's just made would apply to the nature of free will, or affect the foundations of physics.

  Voltaire en son temps: avec Mme du Châtelet 1754-1748 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1978) by Rene Vaillot is more pedantic, but pulls out worthwhile nuggets, such as the tableau of du Châtelet, over morning coffee, impressing a visitor by reading out a letter from Christian Wolff about possible giant inhabitants on the planet Jupiter. The letter was in Latin, and the idea, once developed in conversation with Voltaire, is clearly at the heart of his (highly recommended) short story "Micromegas." Its theme of an innocently wise giant's perspective—whose soul, one suspects, is what Voltaire once hoped for himself—is one that has swirled through texts over the centuries, from the Bible to Hollywood's The Day the Earth Stood Still to Ted Hughes's "The Iron Man."

  For a straightforward biography Voltaire in Love, by Nancy Mitford (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957) is, as one would expect, not especially accurate in biographical details, clueless about the science, bitchy in tone, and a cracking good read. Fontanelle's On the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds (London: Nonesuch Press, 1929), translated by John Glanville, is wonderful on giving a sense of the enthusiasm du Châtelet might have experienced gazing up at night.

  The second chapter of Science and the Enlightenment by Thomas Hankins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985) is the best start for the Leibniz/du Châtelet/Newton issues, while I. O. Wade's Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941) is not quite as dry as the title suggests. Steven Shapin's essay "Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes," Isis, 72, (1981), pp. 187-215, widens the intellectual struggles, as does, even more, his polemical reinterpretation The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  Carolyn Iltis's "Madame du Châtelet's metaphysics and mechanics," in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 8 (1977), pp. 29-48, is a more conventional extending of the historical setting, and fits well with the intriguing "Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers: Concepts of Matter in Eighteenth-Century Thought," by P. M. Heimann and J. E. McGuire, in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 5 (1971), pp. 233-306. To situate the Château at Cirey as a research institution and show what an intellectually adventurous couple could produce, it would be hard to find more apt authors than Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, joint writers of Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities (London: HarperCollins, 1999).

  Einstein and the Equation

  Einstein

  I have a weakness for some of the early biographies of Einstein: as with old movies, the very nature of their presentation captures something of the period in which their subject lived, which few currently produced items could match. Two biographies that Einstein himself especially liked are Einstein: His Life and Times, by Philipp Frank (New York: Knopf, 1947), his successor at Prague; and Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography, by Carl Seelig, trans, by Mervyn Savill (London: Staples Press, 1956). Seelig was a journalist and friend of the family who corresponded with Einstein for years.

  Of more recent works, Banesh Hoffmann's Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel (New York: Viking, 1972) is the ideal introductory mix of biography and scientific background. For the early years, The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity, by Lewis Pyenson (Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985) shows what thoughtful academic work can achieve, as with Pyenson's hunting out the detailed workings of the family firm Einstein grew up within, and noting his uncle's development of a measuring device that depended on verifying the signals from two independent clocks—a key part, once the issue is pondered over, of the reasoning behind special relativity. Another ingenious probing is in Robert Schulmann's "Einstein at the Patent Office: Exile, Salvation or Tactical Retreat"; in a special edition of Science in Context, vol. 6, number i (1993), pp. 17-24.

  For the cultural setting, very few scientists or historians of science can match the depth of insight which Fritz Stern—one of America's great historians—brings out in the long third chapter of his Einstein s German World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), or his earlier "Einstein's Germany" in Albert Einstein, Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 319-43. One who does reach Stern's heights is Abraham Pais, whose own life has been a mirror of much of what the twentieth century has had to offer, and whose "Subtle Is the Lord. . .": The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) is probably the last account we'll have from a researcher who knew Einstein well. It's built on a close reading of Einstein's papers, so it is more technical than this book, but it's a thorough, reasoned evaluation.

  The other standout thinker in Einstein studies is Gerald Holton, who has kept a freshness and depth of insight in his work extending now for more than forty years. I especially recommend his The Advancement of Science, and its Burdens (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986, 1998), as well as Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996).

  In addition to the Veblen essay, Claude Levi-Strauss's little pamphlet "Race and History," reprinted in his Structural Anthropology, Vol. 2 (New York: Penguin, 1977) elaborates on ways profound ideas can emerge from the colliding of cultures; Mary Douglas's classic Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge, 1966) takes a deeper look at the powerful potentialities of conceptual and social fissures. Nikon Bonder's Yiddishe Kop: Creative Problem Solving in Jewish Learning Lore and Humor (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999) is an oddly near-mystical account of an intriguing cultural habit, while Howard Gardner's essay "The Creators' Patterns" in Dimensions of Creativity, ed. Margaret A. Boden (Cambridge, Mass: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press), pp. 143-58, brings us back to Earth, putting Einstein and Besso in the context
of Freud with Fliess, Martha Graham with Louis Horst, and other innovators who needed a supportive friend in their initial years-long period of seeming isolation, even while their later breakthroughs were somehow privately being prepared.

  Physics Introductions

  For the underlying physics, the ideal thing is to spend a summer with an introductory calculus book, after which all freshman university physics texts suddenly open up. But since life is short, and not everyone has the spare summer, Robert Mills (of Yang-Mills fame) wrote the seemingly easygoing yet quite powerful Space, Time and Quanta: An Introduction to Contemporary Physics (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1994), which can provide that freshman-level introduction even for readers who bring no calculus with them.

  On a less technical level, an excellent compilation is Timothy Ferris's The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991). It offers gracefully written essays, often by the key practitioners— there's even a four-page account of E=mc2 by Einstein himself.

  The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Kraus (New York: Basic Books, 1995) takes another fresh approach: E=mc2, for example, is discussed there in terms of the difficulties a real-life Scottie would face in responding to Captain Kirk's command, "Beam me up." Kraus's later Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Basic Books, 1994) develops some of the physics more systematically. Dance for Two: Selected Essays, by Alan Lightman (London: Bloomsbury, 1996) is a brightly written account of selected topics: the title essay, for example, describes Newton's laws in terms of the grinding jolts of the whole earth as it moves up or down (ever so slightly!) in response to the leaps of a single ballerina on its surface.