The Monist (1890-1922):
One of the strangest scientific journals of the era. C. S.Peirce,
naturally, liked to publish in it. Here are links to the
32 volumes out-of-copyright in the US.
Partial translation of an article by Paul Drude in 1904
by A. J. Sederberg and B. H. McGuyer [2013/03]
What an unfortunate title for this
extremely interesting article, made worse
by the absence of a meaningful abstract!
The (modern) authors have translated extracts
from one of Drude's Tesla-coil papers; written
a modern commentary (and corrected some of Drude's
minor errors); and pointed out Drude's prediction
of non-reciprocal mutual inductance, a subject
familiar in the early 1900s but rarely discussed
today. [DRUDE;ELECTROMAGNETISM]
The philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll
by Philip Jourdain
[London: Allen & Unwin, 1918]
An attempt to write comically about cutting-edge
topics of the day in logic. Lewis Carroll did it better,
as Jourdain perhaps realised: the accompanying "notes"
are Carroll quotes, and provide a sort of philosophical
commentary on the Alice books in their own right.
According to I. Grattan-Guinness, Russell himself
collaborated in the production of this book.
[LOGIC]
INTERESTING ITEMS ELSEWHERE:
Fritz Hasenöhrl and E = mc²
by Stephen P. Boughn
[European Journal of Physics 38, 262 (2013)]
Hasenöhrl, who died in the Great War, calculated
the mass of blackbody radiation; his result differed
from Einstein's famous formula. Thus began a long story
involving several famous (and infamous) names in
Twentieth-Century physics. This paper by Boughn (an
expert on the subject) concentrates on a close reading of
Hasenöhrl's original papers.
Charles A. A. Dellschau Dreams of Flying
by Rebecca J. Rosen
[The Atlantic Monthly 2013 March]
Sympathetic article about the
presumably delusional
outsider-artist whose
illustrations
of secret Nineteenth-Century California aircraft
have brought him posthumous fame.
William Rankine on Entropy, Love and Marriage
A very, very good blog-post about Rankine's pre-Clausius
discovery of entropy, followed (for dessert, I suppose)
by Rankine's
poem "The mathematician in love", a typical
Victorian science-humour piece about marriage as the
integral of love dt.
[Carnotcycle 2013 Feb. 1]
Sofia Kovalevskaya:
Unfortunately, few of her writings
are available online. Our page includes links
to her doctoral thesis, her autobiographical
novel of childhood The Sisters Rajevski,
and the well-known memoir by her friend Mme.
Leffler.
[DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS]