STS.042 / 8.225 [3-0-9]

Spring 2004 [STS.042 = CI-H / 8.225 = CI-M]

Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman:

Physics in the 20th Century

Meeting Times: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4pm, in Room 3-133.

Instructors: Professor David Kaiser; E51-296G, x2-3173, dikaiser@mit.edu;

Alexander Brown (Teaching Assistant), E51-070, x3-6979, afbrown@mit.edu;

Janet Thompson (Writing Tutor), jltsca@mit.edu

Subject Description: During the 20th century, both the ideas and the contexts of physics changed dramatically. In this class we will study some of the changing ideas within modern physics, ranging from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to nuclear and elementary particle physics and cosmology. At the same time, we will situate these ideas within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts. The overall aim will be to understand the changing roles of physics and of physicists over the course of the twentieth century.

Subject Requirements: This is a Communications Intensive (CI) subject. Students who register for STS.042 will receive CI-H credit; students who register for 8.225 will receive CI-M credit (in the Course-8B major); no student will receive both types of CI credit for this subject. As a CI subject, there will be a heavy emphasis upon writing and oral communication. There will be three papers assigned for a total of 20-24 pages of writing over the course of the semester. The first paper (4-5pp) will be due in class on Thursday, 26 February. The second paper (6-7pp) will be due in class on Thursday, 1 April. Students will revise and resubmit their second papers, to give them an opportunity to work on specific writing skills before preparing the final paper; the paper 2 re-writes will be due in class on Thursday, 22 April. The final paper (10-12pp) will be due in class on Thursday, 13 May. Details of the paper assignments will be circulated in class. Students will also take turns making prepared oral presentations over the course of the semester. Presentations will involve a summary of assigned readings and presentation of study questions pertinent to that week’s material. The student will then lead the ensuing class discussion, based on her or his opening presentation. In addition to these written and oral communication assignments, there will be an in-class midterm on Thursday, 18 March. No late papers will be accepted.

Grading: Written and oral communication performance will account for 75% of the final grade. Note that HASS-CI subjects fulfill Phase One of the MIT Writing Requirement for juniors and seniors. Students must receive a grade of B- or better in order to pass Phase One.

Your final grade will be based on: Paper 1 (20%); Paper 2 (20%); Paper 3 (25%); Midterm (25%); Participation in class discussions (including oral presentation) (10%).

Reading Assignments: Required books for the subject are available for purchase at the MIT COOP, 3 Cambridge Center in Kendall Square, 617 499-3230. There is also a packet of readings for the subject, available on-line through the Stellar EReserves subject website. The books are also on reserve at the Hayden Library Reserve Room. All reading assignments are required, and should be completed before each lecture. Readings marked with an asterisk (*) in the syllabus are available on the Stellar subject website. The following three books are required:

Russell McCormmach, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1991).

Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (New York: Anchor Books, 2000).

Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons: From Fission to

the Lmited Test Ban Treaty, 1939-1963 (Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Press,

1995).

Lecture Schedule and Reading Assignments

I. Introduction and Background

Week 1: Course Organization; The Nineteenth-Century Legacy

Tuesday, 3 February: Introductory Lecture

Begin reading Russell McCormmach, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, to be completed by 10 February.

Thursday, 5 February: Maxwell, Electrodynamics, and Cambridge Wranglers

*1. James Clerk Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd ed (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892), vol. 1, v-xii, 155-68.

*2. Bruce J. Hunt, The Maxwellians (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 73-107.

II. Einstein: Relativity, Quanta, and the Philosopher-Scientist

Week 2: The Rise of Theoretical Physics

Tuesday, 10 February: Mechanical and Electrodynamical World Pictures

Finish reading McCormmach, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist.

Thursday, 12 February: Special Relativity and the Ether

*1. Isaac Newton, “Scholium,” in Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries, ed. I. Bernard Cohen and Richard Westfall (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 231-3.

*2. Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics (LaSalle: Open Court, 1960), 271-5.

*3. Albert Einstein, “On the electrodynamics of moving bodies,” translated and reprinted in Arthur I. Miller, Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911) (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1981), 392-6.

Week 3: Philosophy, Experiment, and Special Relativity

Tuesday, 17 February: No class (MIT on Monday class schedule).

Thursday, 19 February: Einstein and Experiment

*1. Gerald Holton, “Mach, Einstein, and the search for reality,” in Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973 [1988]), 237-77.

*2. Peter Galison, “Einstein’s clocks: The place of time,” Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000): 355-89.

Week 4: From the Special to the General Theory

Tuesday, 24 February: The Reception of Special Relativity

*1. Andrew Warwick, “Cambridge mathematics and Cavendish physics: Cunningham, Campbell, and Einstein’s relativity, 1905-1911. Part I: The uses of theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992): 625-56.

Thursday, 26 February: The Origins of General Relativity

** Paper 1 (4-5 pp.) due in class**

*1. Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis (New York: Dover, 1952 [1900]), 72-5.

*2. Albert Einstein, “What is the theory of relativity?,” in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, ed. Carl Seelig (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954), 227-32.

*3. David Kaiser, “General relativity primer,” unpublished manuscript (© 1998).

*4. Loren Graham, “The reception of Einstein’s ideas: Two examples from contrasting political cultures,” in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Gerald Holton and Yehudah Elkana (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 107-36.

Week 5: Rethinking Light and Matter

Tuesday, 2 March: Radiation, Quanta, and Atoms, 1900-1913

*1. Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), 61-77.

*2. Thomas Kuhn, “Revisiting Planck,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14 (1984): 231-52.

Thursday, 4 March: Matrices and Uncertainty

*1. John L. Heilbron, “Bohr’s first theories of the atom,” in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, ed. A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 33-49.

*2. Werner Heisenberg, “Quantum-theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations,” translated and reprinted in Sources of Quantum Mechanics, ed. B. L. van der Waerden (New York: Dover, 1967), 261-6.

*3. David Cassidy, “Heisenberg, uncertainty, and the quantum revolution,” Scientific American 266 (May 1992): 106-12.

Week 6: Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

Tuesday, 9 March: Waves and Probabilities

*1. Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 191-200.

*2. Mara Beller, “Born’s probabilistic interpretation: A case study of ‘concepts in flux,’” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990): 563-88.

Thursday, 11 March: The Einstein-Bohr Debate

*1. Niels Bohr, “The Bohr-Einstein dialogue,” in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, ed. A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 121-40.

*2. N. David Mermin, “Quantum mysteries for anyone,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 397-408.

Week 7: The Contexts of Quanta

Tuesday, 16 March: Quantum Mechanics in Weimar Germany, Interwar US

*1. Paul Forman, “Weimar culture, causality, and quantum theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile intellectual environment,” in Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief, ed. Colin Chant and John Fauvel (New York: Longman, 1980), 267-302.

*2. Alexi Assmus, “The Americanization of molecular physics,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 23 (1992): 1-34.

Thursday, 18 March: In-class Midterm Examination

Begin reading Michael Frayn, Copenhagen, to be completed by 1 April.

Week 8: Spring Break!

Tuesday, 23 March: No class.

Thursday, 25 March: No class.

III. Oppenheimer: Physics, Physicists, and the State

Week 9: Shifting Topics and Centers

Tuesday, 30 March: Nuclear Physics in the 1930s; From Europe to America

*1. Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987 [1978]), 222-35, 282-6.

Thursday, 1 April: Physics under Hitler: deutsche Physik and the bomb

** Paper 2 (6-7pp) due in class**

*1. The Farm Hall Transcripts, ed. Charles Frank (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 70-91.

2. Michael Frayn, Copenhagen.

Week 10: The Physicists’ War

Tuesday, 6 April: Physics in the US: Radar and the Atomic Bomb

1. Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, 27-47.

*2. Robert Serber with Robert Crease, Peace & War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 121-44.

Thursday, 8 April: Film: The Day After Trinity

*1. Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 206-26.

*2. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, November 2, 1945,” in Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections, ed. Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 315-25.

Week 11: Cold War Physics

Tuesday, 13 April: McCarthyism and the Oppenheimer Hearing

*1. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing, ed. Richard Polenberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 94-111.

*2. Bart Bernstein, “‘In the matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,’” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 12 (1982): 195-252.

3. Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, 63-79, 102-8.

Thursday, 15 April: The Rise of Big Science

*1. Philip Morrison, “The laboratory demobilizes,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2 (Nov 1946): 5-6.

*2. David Kaiser, “Francis E. Low: Coming of age as a physicist in postwar America,” Physics@MIT 14 (2001): 24-31, 70-7.

*3. David Kaiser, “Cold war requisitions, scientific manpower, and the production of American physicists after World War II,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (Fall 2002): 131-59.

Week 12: The H-Bomb and Beyond

Tuesday, 20 April: No class. (MIT on Monday class schedule.)

Thursday, 22 April: Film: The Decision to Build the H-Bomb

** Paper 2 Re-Write due in class**

*1. “The GAC Report of October 30, 1949,” reprinted in Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989 [1976]), 153-62.

*2. Jeremy Bernstein, “The need to know,” in Asymptotic Realms of Physics: Essays in Honor of Francis E. Low, ed. Alan H. Guth, Kerson Huang, and Robert L. Jaffe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), xvii-xxiv.

3. Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, 48-62, 80-88.

IV. Feynman and Postwar American Theory

Week 13: Particles and Fields

Tuesday, 27 April: The Conservative Revolution: QED and Renormalization

*1. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 77-101.

*2. David Kaiser, “Making tools travel: Pedagogy and the transfer of skills in postwar theoretical physics,” in Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. David Kaiser (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming), 45pp.

Thursday, 29 April: The Challenge to Field Theory

*1. Geoffrey Chew, “Impasse for the elementary-particle concept,” in The Sciences Today, ed. Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler (New York: Arno, 1977 [1974]), 366-99.

*2. David Kaiser, “Nuclear democracy: Political engagement, pedagogical reform, and particle physics in postwar America,” Isis 93 (June 2002): 229-268.

Week 14: Standard Models

Tuesday, 4 May: Quarks, Gauge Fields, and the Rise of the Standard Model

*1. Harald Fritzsch, Quarks: The Stuff of Matter (New York: Basic Books), 47-87, 123-37.

Thursday, 6 May: Big Bang vs. Steady-State Cosmology

*1. Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), 133-42.

*2. Helge Kragh, “Big bang cosmology,” in Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives, ed. Norriss Hetherington (New York: Garland, 1993), 371-89.

*3. Helge Kragh, “Steady state theory,” in Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives, ed. Norriss Hetherington (New York: Garland, 1993), 391-404.

Week 15: Cosmology and Unification

Tuesday, 11 May: Inflation and Superstrings

*1. Alan Guth, “Inflation and the new era of high-precision cosmology,” Physics@MIT 15 (2002): 28-39.

*2. Peter Galison, “Theory bound and unbound: Superstrings and experiment,” in Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific, and Historical Dimensions, ed. Friedel Weinert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 369-408.

Thursday, 13 May: Course summary.

**Paper 3 (10-12 pp.) due in class**

Some Reading Strategies for History Courses

A List of Informal Suggestions^*

1. History isn’t just about learning facts and dates. It’s also about understanding how and why things happened. So don’t get bogged down in taking in all the facts and dates, at the expense of the big picture. The key is to ask yourself, “Why would this event be important, and how does it relate to other events?” These questions give you the framework to hang your facts and dates on. For instance, it’s not so important to remember all the dates that show up in the narratives, but rather to ask, “Which dates refer to especially significant things, and what do they tell us about the order in which things happened?” This is not to say that you can forget all facts and dates, but it is to suggest remembering them within a meaningful context.

2. History readings often give you more details of information than you actually need to remember. Again, here the big picture is important. Authors of historical accounts often include details to make their cases more persuasive or appealing. But on the same principle as above, not all of these details need to be noted down and stored away.

3. History is interpretive. This means that people will sometimes tell different stories about events or attribute different significance to them. When you read history you should keep in mind that the accounts you have before you do not represent the final truth. This does not mean that history is simply made up or that “anything goes.” Rather, these historical accounts represent the efforts of (usually) intelligent, thoughtful people to make sense of what we can find out about what happened in the past.

4. History courses often have a lot of reading. Therefore you need to practice active, intelligent reading. Keep asking yourself, “What is the point of this book or article? What am I supposed to be getting out of it?” Then organize your reading around answering those questions. Often it helps to scan material quickly to get a sense of what the point is before really getting into it; often it helps to look back over it after reading it to fix the main points in your understanding.

5. History courses use different kinds of materials that demand different kinds of reading. For instance, a narrative of someone’s life will probably be quicker and easier to read than a historian’s analysis of an event and its reasons. A collection of primary documents will make you ask different questions than will a textbook account.