Kirjahaku

Hermann von Helmholtz was a towering figure of nineteenth-century scientific and intellectual life. Best known for his achievements in physiology and physics, he also contributed to other disciplines such as ophthalmology, psychology, mathematics, chemical thermodynamics, and meteorology. With Helmholtz: A Life in Science, David Cahan has written a definitive biography, one that brings to light the dynamic relationship between Helmholtz’s private life, his professional pursuits, and the larger world in which he lived. ? Utilizing all of Helmholtz’s scientific and philosophical writings, as well as previously unknown letters, this book reveals the forces that drove his life—a passion to unite the sciences, vigilant attention to the sources and methods of knowledge, and a deep appreciation of the ways in which the arts and sciences could benefit each other. By placing the overall structure and development of his scientific work and philosophy within the greater context of nineteenth-century Germany, Helmholtz also serves as cultural biography of the construction of the scientific community: its laboratories, institutes, journals, disciplinary organizations, and national and international meetings. Helmholtz’s life is a shining example of what can happen when the sciences and the humanities become interwoven in the life of one highly motivated, energetic, and gifted person.

An Institute for an Empire is the first scholarly study of one of the world’s foremost scientific institutions, the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR) in Imperial Germany. The Reichsanstalt stood at the forefront of institutional innovation in science and technology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, uniting diverse practitioners and representatives of physics, technology, industry, and the state. It demonstrated how physics and industrial technology could help build a modem society and a modem nation-state. Moreover, it encouraged and helped inaugurate the era of Big Science. Professor Cahan also discusses the Reichsanstalt’s leaders and scientists, including Wemer von Siemens and Hermann von Helmholtz, as well as its scientific and technological work. Among the Reichsanstalt’s many accomplishments were contributions to the new quantum physics, development of physical standards and measuring instruments for science, industry, and the state, and testing work for a variety of German industries.