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摘要
In 1900 many eminent scientists did not believe atoms existed, yet within just a few years the atomic century launched into history with an astonishing string of breakthroughs in physics that began with Albert Einstein and continues to this day. Before this explosive growth into the modern age took place, an all-but-forgotten genius strove for forty years to win acceptance for the atomic theory of matter and an altogether new way of doing physics. Ludwig Boltz-mann battled with philosophers, the scientific establishment, and his own potent demons. His victory led the way to the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century.Now acclaimed science writer David Lindley portrays the dramatic story of Boltzmann and his embrace of the atom, while providing a window on the civilized world that gave birth to our scientific era. Boltzmann emerges as an endearingly quixotic character, passionately inspired by Beethoven, who muddled through the practical matters of life in a European gilded age. Boltzmann's story reaches from fin de siècle Vienna, across Germany and Britain, to America. As the Habsburg Empire was crumbling, Germany's intellectual might was growing; Edinburgh in Scotland was one of the most intellectually fertile places on earth; and, in America, brilliant independent minds were beginning to draw on the best ideas of the bureaucratized old world.Boltzmann's nemesis in the field of theoretical physics at home in Austria was Ernst Mach, noted today in the term Mach I, the speed of sound. Mach believed physics should address only that which could be directly observed. How could we know that frisky atoms jiggling about corresponded to heat if we couldn't see them? Why should we bother with theories that only told us what would probably happen, rather than making an absolute prediction? Mach and Boltzmann both believed in the power of science, but their approaches to physics could not have been more opposed. Boltzmann sought to explain the real world, and cast aside any philosophical criteria. Mach, along with many nineteenth-century scientists, wanted to construct an empirical edifice of absolute truths that obeyed strict philosophical rules. Boltzmann did not get on well with authority in any form, and he did his best work at arm's length from it. When at the end of his career he engaged with the philosophical authorities in the Viennese academy, the results were personally disastrous and tragic. Yet Boltzmann's enduring legacy lives on in the new physics and technology of our wired world.Lindley's elegant telling of this tale combines the detailed breadth of the best history, the beauty of theoretical physics, and the psychological insight belonging to the finest of novels.
评论 (5)
出版社周刊评论
In this well-researched study, Lindley (The End of Physics), a physicist and editor at Science News, follows the career of Ludwig Boltzmann, who played a quiet yet crucial role in physics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1897, Boltzmann proposed the then-controversial premise that matter consisted of atoms and molecules. At the time, no proof of atomic theory yet existed, and many people considered it only a fiction. Boltzmann was the first to pursue the idea that molecules in gases move with varying velocities and that these variations could be evaluated using statistical methods. Lindley describes the controversy surrounding Boltzmann's scientific publications and his angst when his theories failed to gain wide acceptance. His search for academic acceptance led him to professorships in Vienna, Graz, Munich and finally back to Vienna, sometimes these settings blur as the author jumps backward and forward in time. But Lindley's precise detailing of the inception of modern atomic theory does not falter, and he leads the lay reader along with straightforward analogies. In 1905, toward the end of Boltzmann's life, Einstein applied Boltzmann's techniques, but his results were largely overshadowed by his papers on relativity, published the same year. Boltzmann, meanwhile, had sunk into a clinical depression. In the fall of 1906 he took his own life. Within a few years, his fundamental tools would enable the development of quantum theory. Lindley offers a well-crafted blend of biography and science; readers who sought out David Bodanis's E=mc2 will also enjoy this similar attempt to explain for laypeople the basis of modern physics. (Jan. 18) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Now enshrined in scientific orthodoxy, the notion that such phenomena as heat and expansion derive from the motion of invisible atoms once attracted only the most adventurous minds. Lindley here recounts the life journey of one of the greatest of these minds, so rescuing from obscurity a great intellectual pioneer whose atomic theorizing gave new coherence to thermodynamics and whose statistical techniques paved the way to a probabilistic redefinition of all physics. In Boltzmann's lifelong engagement with the atomic hypothesis, readers see how a single determined mind can slowly tease out the profound implications of a difficult idea. We also see how Boltzmann progressed from a daring extension of a single formula for calculating the velocity of atoms in a gas to the full development of atomic kinetics, so shaking the foundations of classical physics and opening the way for the quantum revolution effected by Planck and Einstein. While sparing us the mathematical complexities, Lindley conveys a fully nuanced sense of the obstacles--conceptual, personal, and professional--that Boltzmann had to surmount to frame his daring theory. Perhaps even more important, Lindley shows how Boltzmann's defeat of skeptical empiricism secured a new intellectual freedom in science for all future theorists. An engrossing portrait of an epoch-making thinker. --Bryce Christensen
Choice 评论
The name "Boltzmann" is well known to students of the physical sciences. There are constants and equations that bear Boltzmann's name and Boltzmann's H-theorem relates the thermodynamic quantity, entropy, to statistics and mechanics. Boltzmann, not a particularly sympathetic figure, comes to life in this book through Lindley's effective device of comparing Boltzmann and his work with contemporary scientific personalities and thought. Lindley (Cambridge Univ.) shows how the contributions of Boltzmann placed the then-new science of thermodynamics on firm theoretical ground and also laid the foundations for the disciplines of statistical mechanics and, to a great extent, quantum mechanics. Lindley is a theoretical physicist with editorial experience on scientific journals and also the author of two other popular books on science. He brings to his subject a deep understanding of the scientific significance of Boltzmann's contributions and knowledge of the social, political, and scientific issues of Boltzmann's era. Too often the sciences are taught formally with little appreciation for the personalities and the evolution of the thought of those responsible for the results. Lindley's book corrects this for the crucial period when the atom was born and theoretical physics became a subject of its own. General readers; undergraduates through professionals. M. Coplan Institute for Physical Science and Technology
Kirkus评论
A tribute to the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, whose early work laid the groundwork for quantum and chaos theory. Lindley (The End of Physics, 1993) has several goals: to honor Boltzmann, to emphasize that 20th- and 21st-century physics owe debts to the so-called era of classical physics (c. 18501900), and to solidify the argument that theoretical physicists are not simply quark-gazersthey open new ways for experimental physicists to think about matter and energy (as well as time and the Big Bang). Boltzmann, born in 1844 to a middle-class family in the Vienna of imperial Austria, entered the University of Vienna in 1867 with no notable signs of scientific genius. But he was quickly attracted to the ideas about atoms that were then swirling among a few scientists in Austria and elsewhere. Boltzmann developed a theory about the behavior of atoms: using statistical methods that included reckoning probability, Boltzmann offered mathematical evidence that the behavior of invisible, but numerous, beads of matter (atoms) were responsible for, for instance, how gas responded to temperature and pressure. Lindley brings in scientists from around the world to defend and challenge Boltzmanns theories in detail. Austrian scientists in particular confronted him on his theory of atoms: If you cant see it, does it really exist? Nevertheless, Boltzmann established an international reputation, with support from Emperor Franz-Josef. Despite what most would call a successful careerhe was in demand from prestigious universitiesthe pressure of scientific and academic politics got to Boltzmann, and he eventually committed suicide, even as successors Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and others were acknowledging their debt to him. Lindley devotes a chapter to connecting the dots of 19th- and 20th-century physics with a history of atomic theory that dates back to the 4th century in Greece. Physicists will be bolstered by Lindleys bottom line: Like Boltzmann, theorizing is okay. Science buffs may need to have references at hand, however, to refresh their memories on the principles of thermodynamics and kinetic energy.
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
It may be difficult for the contemporary reader to relate to a time when the existence of atoms was in question, but that was the case just over 100 years ago. In this fascinating biography of Ludwig Boltzmann, considered the father of theoretical physics, Lindley (The End of Physics), an editor at Science News, the author of numerous articles, and a respected lecturer (Cambridge Univ., Fermi National Laboratory), vivifies the struggle to prove the existence of atoms and the birth of modern physics. At the end of the 19th century, no technology existed to verify that atoms existed. Scientists had to rely on an explanation of the property of matter based on the movement of its smallest parts (kinetics). Many physicists, such as Ernst Mach, believed that science should concern itself with what can actually be measured and demonstratedDnot abstractions like atoms. Boltzmann embraced a more open theoretical approach. Scholarly but accessible, this well-written work reveals the story's drama. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.DJames Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
目录
Introduction |
Chapter 1 A Letter from Bombay Lessons in Obscurity |
Chapter 2 Invisible World The Kind of Motion We Call Heat |
Chapter 3 Dr. Boltzmann of Vienna The Precocious Genius |
Chapter 4 Irreversible Changes The Enigma of Entropy |
Chapter 5 ""You Will Not Fit In"" The Daunting Prussians |
Chapter 6 The British Engagement Parsons, Lawyers, and Physicists |
Chapter 7 ""It's Easy to Mistake a Great Stupidity for a Great Discovery"" Philosophy Seduces Physics |
Chapter 8 American Inno |