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Current issue

Online resources for the history of physics & allied fields

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New links - (updated 10/07)

• The voice of Lord Kelvin (British Library)
• Hanford Reactors Site history
• Highlights from Niels Bohr’s career
• Harvard University Physics Department history
• Albert Einstein Archives Online
• Enrico Fermi and the Manhattan Project

History of physics

General  

• PSIgate has a large list of annotated history links and searchable timelines
• Net Advance of Physics also has links, especially to online articles, but many dead links.
• "This week in physics history" (scroll down to find list)
• "This month in physics history" (scroll down to Departments)
• From the Greeks to Einstein, by Michael Fowler: Galileo, Newton, and more
• History of Cosmology from Antiquity to Einstein and beyond by Jose Wudka  
• History of Mathematics Archives includes Topics in history of mathematical physics – with articles on time, light, gravitation and other relativity topics – and biographies of many physicists from Aristotle to Feynman 
• Large physics timeline
• Timeline of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics including a brief history of string theory
• Classic Papers ("chemistry" including atomic physics, thermodynamics, radioactivity)
• Timeline of Electricity and Magnetism
• Timeline of atomic structure discoveries
• History of Crystallography
• History of Optics Timeline and History of Optics Highlights
• Length: from Measurement Standard to Fundamental Constant | Evolution of time measurement | History of time and frequency measurements at the Bureau of Standards/NIST

Before 1900  

• A History of physics (ancient to 19th century) from the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Torricelli’s Discovery of the Vacuum
• Vacuum Technology
• Light: Particle or Wave? – Newton and Huygens
• Herschel's Discovery of Infrared Light, a classroom reconstruction
• 19th Century Physics from VictorianWeb
• "Nineteenth Century Ether Theory" by Michel Janssen (PDF file)
• A History of Kinetic Theory
• A Concise history of thermodynamics from Wheeler's 1951 biography of Gibbs
• Timeline historical sketches of classical Electromagnetic Theory and Statistical Mechanics & Thermodynamics by Jeff Biggus
• Early electric, magnetic and related medical instruments at the Bakken Museum
• Old physics instruments in the Naples Physics Museum
• Physics instruments (mostly 19th century) in the schools & University of Sassari, Sardinia
• See also this page's list of physicist biographies (Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, etc.)

Since 1900  

• A Century of Physics Timeline 1900-2000 by the American Physical Society (note: opens in a new window!) and video talks at the Centennial meeting plus 20th Century Discoveries in Physics (a short summary for the meeting)
• 20th Century Physics told through Nobel Prizes and a Timeline of Nobel Prize Winners
• History of Mathematics Archives includes texts on the history of Special Relativity, General Relativity, and the Beginning of the Quantum Age
• Physics Web includes articles on Quantum Theory and the Nobel Prize and more.
• Contributions of Women to 20th-century physics
• Physics in 1900 streaming audio/video lecture, A. Wroblewski
• The Origins of Quantum Theory by C. Carson (14-page PDF)
• Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond
• The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s: oral history with Bardeen, Bargmann, Wigner
• Quantum Physics, a personal perspective: lectures by Hans Bethe (audio/video)
• Louis de Broglie's 1923 Wave Mechanics
• See also this page's list of physicist biographies

Radiation & nuclear

• The X-Ray Century
• Radioactivity: Historical Figures 
• Nuclear Medicine and more in the National Atomic Museum (National Museum of Nuclear Science and History)
• Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (Manhattan Project & after) has many annotated references
• Nuclear Files and Atomic Archive have documents, timeline, etc. Trinity nuclear weapons history. Internet and the Bomb from NDRC. See also Los Alamos Lab History, Pugwash History, The Race for the Superbomb and Manhattan Project links.
• Radiation and Radiation Protection (links only)
• Our exhibit on the Discovery of Fission

Accelerators & particles

• History of particle accelerators (S. Kullander)
• History of Accelerators told through Nobel Prizes
• The Van de Graaf generator
• Harvard University Cyclotrons, Rutgers University Cyclotron photo tour and the RIKEN cyclotron; Physics at Brookhaven National Lab
• The Development of Particle Physics by V. Kudryavtsev (PowerPoint presentations)  
• A Fundamental Particle Timeline and a Brief History of String Theory
• History of Neutrinos and A Neutrino Timeline
• The Fall of Parity (1956 experiment)

Useful devices

• The Transistor -- our most-visited exhibit
• The Transistor Museum
• Virtual Museum of Computing
• Laser History and Laser at Bell Labs
• Short History of Fiber Optics
• Bell's Path to the Telephone
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Spectacles and other Vision Aids--the first widespread application of physics was in optics
• History of the Quartz Watch; and the atomic clock (by P. Forman)
• Mass Spectrometry
• History of Superconductors
• Physics Success Stories from AIP -- how taxpayers supported advances in energy and the environment, medical imaging, transportation, telecommunications, lasers, new materials, the Global Positioning System, etc.
• History of the Internet -- mainly the work of physicists!
• Contributions of Physics to the Information Age (I.P. Bindloss)
• History of Silicon Valley. 
• More electrical technology links from IEEE.

People

• Many short biographies of physicists are in the History of Mathematics Archives
• Nobel Prize Laureates and (for multimedia users) the Nobel Channel
• National Academies' Biographical Memoirs (enter “biographical memoirs” and a scientist’s name)
• Contributions of Women to 20th-century physics is a big store of information. See also Distinguished Women in Physics and women in astronomy below.
• Physiciens d'hier (in French)
• 17th and 18th century math/physics biographies
• Short profiles: Famous scientists related to electricity, Electromagnetic Personalities, an Anecdotal History of Optics, and a Thumbnail History of Electronics by L. Taylor
• Physicists on the Money, honored on banknotes

Alphabetical list of physicists

These are not listed because they're the most important people, but because the Websites are especially good or interesting. To locate archival collections, interviews, etc. for an individual, consult our International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences.

• André-Marie Ampère
• Archimedes
• John Bahcall, an interview
• John Bell
• Niels Bohr's Nobel biography, career highlights, another short biography; the Bohr Archives including Bohr-Heisenberg letters
• Robert Boyle
• Edward Condon and Cold War Politics by Jessica Wang
• Marie Curie; Marie Curie and US Radium Standards
• Robert Dicke and relativity by J. Zirker
• P.A.M. Dirac
• Albert Einstein and our Einstein links
• Michael Faraday 
• Enrico Fermi links
• Richard Feynman and Feynman Links
• Feynman talks: Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Robb Memorial Lectures (video)
• Franklin Tercentenary 1706-2006; Ben Franklin, scientist; Franklin and Electrostatics; Franklin's Kite; Franklin and Lightning Rods
• Galileo's Battle by PBS-Nova and the Trial of Galileo; Galileo, Copernicus & Mathematical Physics; the Galileo Project and a manuscript; Article on the Tower of Pisa Legend; Galileo and Renaissance Art
• William Rowan Hamilton
• Stephen Hawking's Page and Hawking Page by N. Donaldson
• Werner Heisenberg
• Robert Hooke, Natural Philosopher (BBC) and RobertHooke.org (Westminster School)
• Joseph Henry
• Christiaan Huygens
• Kelvin (William Thomson) and his voice.
• Igor Kurchatov
• Karl Lark-Horovitz
• E.O. Lawrence and the cyclotron; Lawrence and his laboratory; Who Was Ernest O. Lawrence?
• Joseph Loschmidt
• James Clerk Maxwell; his youth; BBC radio production on Maxwell (streaming audio)
• Albert A. Michelson
• Isaac Newton Links, the Newton Project including manuscripts; a Newton Chymistry and optics notebook
• Emmy Noether by N. Byers
• J. Robert Oppenheimer, and documents on the Oppenheimer security hearings
• Frank Oppenheimer and his Exploratorium
• Wolfgang Pauli
• Linus Pauling, his research notebooks and work on the nature of the chemical bond
• Max Planck
• I. I. Rabi (J. Rigden)
• Osborne Reynolds (as in the number)
• Ernest Rutherford
• Andrei Sakharov 
• Erwin Schrodinger
• Julian Schwinger by K. Milton
• Glenn Seaborg 
• Arnold Sommerfeld archive (in German)
• Leo Szilard page 
• Eugene Wigner 

History of astronomy/space science/geophysics/

• PSIgate has astronomy links and timelines
• History of Astronomy Page (University of Bonn, Germany), with many links to observatories, biographies, etc.
• Ancient Astronomical Cosmology worldwide
• Greek and Arab Astronomy (Vatican books)
• From Stargazers to Starships (astronomy, rocketry) by David Stern
• Greeks to Kepler "The Starry Messenger" from Cambridge
• History of Cosmology from Antiquity to Einstein and beyond by Jose Wudka
• The Development of Astronomy, Copernicus to Newton, with explanations (Univ. of Tenn.)
• A History of Astronomical Spectroscopy
• The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Debate over the size of the universe
• Histories of X-ray Astronomy (lists satellites) and of Infrared Astronomy
• X-ray Astronomy at Goddard 1965-1990
• History of High-Energy Astrophysics
• History of gravity wave detection efforts
• Our exhibit on A Pulsar Discovery

Planets, space science, geophysics

• PSIgate has earth sciences links and timelines
• The Face of the Moon, Galileo to Apollo, in pictures
• Geomagnetism from Gilbert to space physics
• The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery (text of book by W. Sheehan)
• The 18th Century Transit of Venus; the 1882 Venus Transit observed in S. Africa
• A History of Comet Studies
• The NASA History page including Sputnik and the Early Space Age; online books, etc.
• History of Space Exploration from Univ. of Hawaii
• Chronology of discoveries of solar system objects
• Exploration of the Magnetosphere
• History of Radiation Geophysics
• Raymond Davis's Solar Neutrino Experiments with historical press releases and video
• NOAA's atmospheric and ocean sciences links
• Plate Tectonics and Wegener, Continental Drift by J. Tuzo Wilson, and related historical images
• The First International Polar Year (1881-1884)
• The Discovery of Global Warming

People

(To locate archival collections, interviews, etc. for an individual, consult our International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences. )

• Bruce Medalists (notable astronomers)
• Distinguished Women in Astronomy, Women in Astronomy by U. Toronto, History of Women in Astronomy by S. Stephens (Astronomical Society of the Pacific)
• Notable Geophysicists (American Geophysical Union honors)
• NOAA's biographies: Coast & Geodetic Survey
  
• Brahe: "The Noble Dane: Images of Tycho Brahe"
• Edwin Hubble by A. Sandage
• J.C. Kapteyn
• Maria Mitchell
• Alfred Wegener

Histories of institutions

Mainly physics  

• The Acoustical Society of America
• The American Institute of Physics
• American Association of Physics Teachers
• Physics in Australia to1945
• Physics in Italy (ASF)
• Acoustical Society of America
• Argonne National Lab
• AVS society history
• Bell Labs/Lucent
• The Cavendish Lab, Cambridge
• Caltech History (J. Goodstein)
• Case Western Reserve Physics Dept. history
• CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
• Physics at Cornell
• Hanford reactor site
• Harvard Physics Department and Harvard University Cyclotrons
• Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory stories
• Breaking Through: A Century of Physics at Berkeley
• Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Physics at Michigan Tech
• Niels Bohr Institute (Copenhagen)
• Nuclear physics at Notre Dame
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• History of Physics at Oxford
• Physics at Wesleyan U.
• History of Physics at Purdue
• RAND corporation
• Stanford Univ. Physics dept.
• U.S. Science Policy and Early Cold War (W. Golden)
• Weights and Measures, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology
• More electrical/electronic corporations from IEEE

Astronomy/space science/geophysics 

• National Academy of Sciences
• American Astronomical Society
• National Aeronautics & Space Administration (and its labs)
• Astronomy in Hawaii
• U. Michigan Astronomy Dept. and Observatories
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
• Paris Observatory
• Royal Observatory, Greenwich
• Uppsala Astronomical Observatory
• Mt. Wilson Observatory
• Yerkes Observatory
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• NOAA - oceans and weather
• History of the National Weather Service

Picture sources

• AIP's Emilio Segrè Visual Archives has the largest selection
• Portraits of Physicists from Univ. of Frankfurt
• Images of physicists on postage stamps
• Gallery of Physicists from the University of Rio de Janeiro
• Images of Physicists from University of California-Santa Barbara
• The Scientific Instrument Commission's Online Register of Scientific Instruments
• Caltech Archives PhotoNet
• Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Photos
• NOAA photo archives (weather, oceans)
• Nuclear Astrophysics Photo Archives
• Old Astronomy Pictures ("DAHAP")
• Royal Society of Chemistry (search for view image in free text)

General physics - General history

• Got a physics question? Try Scientific American's "Ask the Experts"
  or ask a physics professor ("Dear Lou")
• PsiGate has many annotated links in physics, astronomy, earth sciences, etc.
• PhysLink calls itself the "ultimate physics resource"
• The Physics Links page of the American Physical Society
• Physics 2000 from the University of Colorado - learn using interactive animations
• General History Links from the University of Kansas
• History of Science Museum links (scientific instruments)
• History of Physics Links and Other Physics Links by Net Advance of Physics - MIT

General history of science links, information

• Virtual Center for Science, Technology, and Medicine (ECHO) has MANY LINKS in all areas
• Science Studies Resources (Univ. of Missouri - Kansas City)
• History of Science Guide from the History of Science Society

History of science community

• Grants, meetings, and announcements
• History of Science Society's Guide to people and programs
• Join discussion on the H-Net Listserv for History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
• Charles Babbage Institute - Center for the History of Information Processing (U. Minnesota)
• Bakken Library for electricity and magnetism in life science and medicine
• The Chemical Heritage Foundation, including the Othmer Library and Beckman Center for history of chemistry
• IEEE History Center and its Newsletter
• NASA History Office (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Societies & committees  

• The History of Science Society is a rich resource for scholars. Membership Directory
• The British Society for the History of Science
• The American Physical Society's Forum on the History of Physics and its Newsletter
• Institute of Physics (UK) History of Physics Group
• The American Astronomical Society's Historical Astronomy Division
  and the International Astronomical Union's Commission 41: History of Astronomy
• The American Geophysical Union's History of Geophysics Committee
• German Commission on History of Geophysics
• International Commission on History of Meteorology
  —
• The Society for Social Studies of Science and its newsletter Technoscience
• SHOT - Society for the History of Technology and its Newsletter
• The IEEE's Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT)
• ICOHTEC: International Committee for the History of Technology
• The IUHPS Scientific Instrument Commission
• Philosophy of Science Association

Archival resources

• Our International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences
• Our Physics History Finding Aids
• The Online Archive of California
• NACA/NASA Records at NARA
• Oaister Open Archive harvester
• U. Idaho's Repositories of Primary Sources lists thousands of Websites
• Internet archival resources (from Tulane) lists major links that link onward to countless resources for archives and history
• UNESCO's world archives portal
• The Society of American Archivists
• US National Archives & Records Administration
• The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)
• Sources for History of Quantum Physics
  (Inventory of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics)
• Inventory of Sources for History of Twentieth-Century Physics
• Guide to Sources for Air & Space History (NASM)
• Archives in the DC-MD-VA area near us
• The British National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists and the Public Record Office
• CASE List of European Scientific Archives

Archives of individual scientific institutions

• American Philosophical Society Library
• CalTech Archives and oral histories
• Cambridge University Library Mss.
• CERN Archives
• CNRS Archives (in French)
• Deutsches Museum Archives, Munich
• The Einstein Papers Project (CalTech)
• Albert Einstein Archives (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Einstein Archives Online
• ETH Zurich (in German)
• Lick Observatory Mary Lea Shane Archives
• The Lincei Academy (Italian letter database)
• Fermilab Archives
• IEEE History Center interviews (many physicists)
• Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
• National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council Archives
• National Air and Space Museum -- Space History
• NASA records overview and details.
• Niels Bohr Archive
• Rockefeller Archive Center
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives
• Smithsonian Institution
• University of California, San Diego, Mandeville Library
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Reports on materials in selected archives

From our Newsletter:
• Agilent Technologies
• American Philosophical Society Library
• American Meteorogical Society Library and Archives
• The AT&T Archives and History Center
• The Bakken Library and Museum (Electricity and Biomedicine)
• Bristol University
• Brookhaven National Laboratory
• Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge
• Columbia University Archives
• CSIRO
• German Physical Society Archive
• History of Science Archive at the Museum of Astronomy, Rio de Janeiro
• Imperial College, London
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• The Max Planck Society
• MIT Institute Archives
• National Academy of Sciences
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory
• Radium Institute, Paris
• Smithsonian Institution Archives and oral history interviews
• Strasbourg University
• University of Albany, SUNY
• University of Minnesota Library
• University of Oklahoma Libraries
• University of Chicago Library
• US Presidential Libraries: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Harry S. Truman Library,
  Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, John F. Kennedy Library, Lyndon B. Johnson Library,
  Richard Nixon Library, Jimmy Carter Library, Ronald Reagan Library