Earlier this month, the Sixth AIP Early Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences took place in Salvador, Brazil. An objective of the conference series is to create a sense of community among those starting out in our field and to help them grow as scholars. Ideally, connections and opportunities created through the conference will endure long after, and one of the ways that happens is that participants are invited to adapt the papers they presented for publication in a special issue of an academic journal. Papers from this year’s conference will be submitted for a special issue of Physics in Perspective .

By coincidence, the special issue for the fifth iteration of the conference, held in 2023 in Copenhagen, has just been published through Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte / History of Science and Humanities. The issue features ten articles and was edited by Joanna Behrman, Julia Bloemer, Rebecca Charbonneau, and Climério Paulo da Silva Neto. Abstracts are reprinted below and open-access articles are marked with a *.

Erica L. Meszaros
“Algorithmic Relationships in Babylonian Astronomical Procedure Texts”

This paper presents initial findings on the interaction between astronomical procedures on Babylonian tablets. Using algorithms as a lens, this research investigates the relationship between procedures, data provided on the tablet, and the representations of methods within the tablets. This paper first provides a critical analysis of the term “algorithm” in a historical, Mesopotamian context and how algorithms may be used as an analytical tool for thinking about the relationship between astronomical procedures. Following this description, the paper moves on to discuss a case study from the planetary procedure texts that showcases how an algorithm-based analysis can inform reinterpretations of how the individual procedures interact on a given tablet. The ultimate goal of this work is to shed new light on how the authors and users of these astronomical tablets may have interacted with them.

Michiel Bron
“Transition in Residues: On Depleted Oil Wells, Radioactive Geophysics, and the Origins of the Twentieth Century’s Energy Mix” *

The oil and uranium industries always have been intertwined. Both industries are inherently global and span an extensive geological history. The formation of uranium and oil deposits, and their eventual extraction, is a story circling through early planetary history, continuing in depleted oil wells in Germany, Canada, and France, and lingering well into the second half of the past century. Understanding this history proved to be the key for two businesses that would shape the later twentieth century: the oil and nuclear industries. Oil companies are among the very first to integrate new quantum mechanics and knowledge about radioactive decay into their search for oil. This article locates the origins of this interconnectedness in the emergence of applied geophysics. Based on case studies to the experiments and research projects of geophysicist Richard Ambronn and the studies by the oil service company Schlumberger into measuring radioactive decay as a method of determining underground sediments and finding oil during the 1920s and 1930s, this article argues that the depleted oil sources at Pechelbronn and Celle formed the basis of both industrial and academic developments in the knowledge of radioactivity, geophysics, and petroleum.

Thijs M. K. Latten
“Schrödinger’s Doctrine of Identity: On the Role of Advaita Vedānta in Erwin Schrödinger’s Thought” *

Ever since Erwin Schrödinger learned about Indian thought through Arthur Schopenhauer, it occupied a visible role in both his published writings and personal books. Schrödinger called for a “blood transfusion” of Indian thought into the West and, in one notebook, construed the Upaniṣadic slogan “Brahman = Atman” as the “closest thing to the truth.” However, the historical and philosophical literature on his engagement with Indian ideas remains limited and often confused. Two questions should be addressed for a more comprehensive account of Schrödinger’s philosophical views: which Indian insights did he embrace, and what was their role in his thought? I argue that examining what he termed the Indian “doctrine of identity” illuminates answers to these questions and can correct some historical misinterpretations. First, situating Schrödinger’s reading of Indian works in his time and analyzing his personal notebooks reveals the dominance of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta reading of the Upaniṣads. Second, by analyzing Schrödinger’s published writings and personal notebooks, I argue that this doctrine of identity offered Schrödinger religious consolation, but, furthermore, that Schrödinger took these Indian ideas seriously in his philosophy as well. I highlight how Schrödinger adopted this doctrine of identity into his metaphysical ruminations about the nature of reality and show how it resonates with some of his reflections in the philosophy of science.

Elena Schaa
“A Romantic Genius? The Experience of Knowledge That Shaped Werner Heisenberg’s Scientific Persona” *

In 1976, the year that Werner Heisenberg passed away, Armin Hermann published a short biography, titled Werner Heisenberg in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Since then, historians and biographers have offered their accounts on Heisenberg’s life and his contributions to modern physics. Many of these biographies present Heisenberg as a genius. Upon closer inspection, the ideal of the genius relies on the topos of the experience of knowledge presented in Heisenberg’s memoir from Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik. This article discusses the influence of this topos on his biographies. The article first contextualizes Heisenberg’s popular science texts among his academic career and the cultural contexts of the German Bildungsbürgertum. Second, it focuses on the aesthetic repertoire of knowledge production as the experience of knowledge. By going beyond the semantic level, it is shown that the topos of the experience of nature in Heisenberg’s memoir is central to his scientific persona. Ultimately, the idea of the genius stands in a longue durée of German Romanticism and natural philosophy is shown to shape the masculinities and scientific personae of the modern physicist.

Loukas Freris
“Bringing Small Devices, Giving Design Advice: Introducing Radiation Protection Practices in Greece via the IAEA’s Visiting Professor Program” *

This paper examines how an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expert mission for technical assistance in the late 1950s to Greece was effectively transformed into a mission to achieve the IAEA′s central objective: to consolidate its position as the leading global authority on radiation protection. The study focuses on the work of Alfred Maddock, a professor at the University of Cambridge. In 1959, Maddock arrived in Greece as part of one of the IAEA’s original missions, contributing to an educational program on radioisotopes. Beyond providing educational services, Maddock accomplished something more significant. As the Agency’s facilitator, he introduced radiation protection materials and concepts to the country in accordance with the IAEA protocols. He introduced dosimetry devices (film badges) and, at the same time, reviewed, modified, and created architectural plans for the laboratories of the Greek Nuclear Centre to meet the IAEA safety standards. It is argued that Maddock’s visit to Greece transcended a mere one-sided enforcement process. Rather, it catalyzed a dynamic interaction between Greece and the IAEA, characterized by robust elements of mutual cooperation. This mission stands as a prime example of the gradual integration of IAEA culture within a member state, tailored to local needs and conditions.

Masahiro Inohana
“Economic Rationality and International Humanitarianism: Ryōkichi Sagane’s Advocacy Regarding the Introduction of Foreign Nuclear Reactors to Japan” *

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident underscored the crucial role of nuclear engineering experts. However, the specific arguments and motivations of scientists advocating for the introduction of foreign reactors remain unclear. This study delves into the contribution of Ryōkichi Sagane (1905–1969), a prominent figure during their introduction, and analyzes the specifics of his arguments for the importation of reactors examining his motivations and background. Sagane, who studied nuclear physics in the U.S., gained expertise in nuclear experiments and became acquainted with American scientists. In the late 1950s, with the period of Japan’s adoption of nuclear power, he understood the arguments of foreign and domestic experts and disseminated this information to the public. His claims for importation of reactors rested predominantly on the ground of economic and managerial rationality. Beyond mere rationalism, Sagane’s drive for reactor introduction was rooted in international humanitarianism based on personal friendships that transcended national borders. The rhetoric of promoting nuclear power for the sake of humanity resonated with the nuclear energy policy of the U.S. during the early Cold War. However, unlike the motivation of the U.S. to suppress opposition to the development of nuclear weapons, Sagane’s motivation arose from his scientific practice.

Christina Roberts
“Spacemobile Goes Abroad—NASA’s Cold War Science Education Diplomacy, 1962–1969”

In 1961, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Franklin Institute, a popular science museum in Philadelphia, PA, launched a mobile science education program in the U.S. called the Spacemobile. The program went international a year later, touring 53 countries by 1969. NASA’s Educational Programs Division, part of the Public Affairs Department, collaborated with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. State Department to facilitate the international circulation of science education diplomacy at the height of the early Cold War. Using primary sources from NASA, the USIA, the State Department, oral histories, and memoirs, it is argued that the Spacemobile program mediated the circulation of NASA’s technoscientific knowledge and materials around the world by teaching the basic science behind the space program to students and other public audiences. Mediation occurred when the Spacemobile program accompanied NASA’s technoscientific collaboration and exchange agreements, confirms geopolitical alliances, eased sociopolitical tensions over tracking station expansion, and when it appealed to student audiences receptive to Western ideological perspectives about space science.

Jean-Philippe Martinez
“The Curious Concept That Almost Nobody Seemed to Care About at First: Virtual Particles in the Post-War Period” *

Short-lived, unobservable, and not subject to the usual rules of conservation of energy and momentum, virtual particles—an integral part of the conceptual framework of quantum field theory (QFT)—exhibit a number of curious characteristics which, in recent decades, have in part fueled important discussions about their ontological status. Central to these debates is Richard Feynman’s diagrammatic technique for QFT calculations, which provided in the late 1940s the first systematized and generalized description of the concept of virtual particles. At the time, however, the curious characteristics and the ontology of the latter were the subject of little, if any, debate. This article explores how the concept of virtual particles gradually became subject to interpretative scrutiny in the post-war period. It examines the weight of various aspects of pre-Feynman developments which once guaranteed a firmer phenomenological anchoring of the scientific practices associated with the virtual particle concept. Subsequently, it shows how the questioning of this concept did not result from a simple assessment of its curious characteristics but was part of a wider critique of the new quantum electrodynamics and Feynman’s methods.

Nithyanand Rao
“Invisible Labor and the ‘Ghost Particle’: Underground Physics at the Kolar Gold Fields” *

When cosmic rays—high-energy particles from outer space—encounter the Earth’s atmosphere, they produce particles called neutrinos. To detect them, physicists go underground inside deep mines where the overlying rock can filter out the cosmic-ray background radiation. I examine how the first such detection of neutrinos in 1965 by an international team of physicists at the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in India—a gold mine where the British began mining in 1880—was made possible by the invisible labor of lowered-caste, or Dalit, miners. By studying the underground, this paper contributes to recent attention to verticality in the history of science, while moving away from the dominant approach to spatial studies of sites of science, the lab–field framework, and instead examining the social, political, and economic conditions that made KGF, with its depth, possible as a site for physics.

Using labor histories of KGF and archival material about the experiments, I argue that the mines became nearly three kilometers deep only because of a regime of racialized labor in which Dalit miners worked in difficult and dangerous conditions for less than subsistence-level wages. I also show how the experiments depended on this invisible labor that ran the mines.

Urko Gorriñobeaskoa
“On the Historiography of Epistemic Objects: An Evolutionary Approach”

The term “epistemic object” has been recently used by some scholars in the history and philosophy of science to refer to the peculiar history of objects of inquiry such as RNA, genes, electrons, or phlogiston. Despite the relative success of this neologism as an analytical tool, a comprehensive analysis of its many versions is still lacking. In this article, an attempt has been made to sketch such an analysis first by comparing three main versions of this idea: epistemic things, epistemic objects, and representations of theoretical entities. Second, these conceptions are compared with the notion of scientific concept, arguing that, although similar, they are not the same thing. However, a proposal suggested from the history of concepts program, Klaus Hentschel’s semantic layered methodology, could be usefully adapted for epistemic things. Third, accomplishing such adaptation by drawing from the tradition of evolutionary epistemology is recommended, analyzing the potential fit between historical epistemology and the Evolutionary Epistemology of Theories programme.

Will Thomas and Jon Phillips
American Institute of Physics
history@aip.org

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