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What
you will find on this page
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Michel in
front of the Mausoleum of the bankers' branch of the Siemens family in
which Ferdinand Kurlbaum (1857–1927), of (modest) black-body radiation
fame, lies buried (Ahlsdorf, Mark Brandenburg, Germany, 2000) © Dieter
Hoffmann.
Curriculum
Vitae
I am a member of the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the School of Physics and Astronomy (see my faculty
profile), and the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University
of Minnesota. My research area is the history of modern physics. My dissertation
focused on the transition from classical to special relativistic mechanics. I worked for several years for the Einstein
Papers Project annotating papers, letters, and manuscripts on the history of general relativity. I was a member of a research group at the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science working on the history of general relativity. Our findings were published in: Jürgen Renn (ed.), The Genesis of General Relativity (4 Vols., Dordrecht: Springer, 2007). Over the past few years (and in close collaboration with Tony Duncan, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pittsburgh), I have been working on the history of quantum theory in the 1920s. Guiding my research in general are broader
philosophical questions about scientific methodology and scientific explanation.
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Papers
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- "The Twins and the Bucket: How Einstein Made Gravity rather than Motion Relative in General Relativity." Submitted to Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
- "From Canonical Transformations to Transformation Theory, 1926–1927: The Road to Jordan's Neue Begründung." Co-authored with Tony Duncan. Preprint. Published:
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (2009): 352-362.
- "'No Success Like Failure': Einstein's Quest for General Relativity." To appear in The Cambridge Companion to Einstein (Co-edited with Christoph Lehner).
- "Drawing the Line Between Kinematics and Dynamics in Special Relativity." Preprint. Published:
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (2009) 26-52.
- "Pascual Jordan’s Resolution of the Conundrum of the Wave-Particle Duality of Light." Co-authored with Tony Duncan. Preprint. Published:
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (2008): 634-666.
- "On the Verge of Umdeutung: John Van Vleck and the Correspondence Principle." Co-authored with Tony Duncan. Preprint. Part One; Part Two. Published: Archive for History of Exact Sciences 61 (2007): 553–624, 625–671.
- "Of Pots and Holes: Einstein's Bumpy Road to General Relativity" Annalen der Physik 14, Supplement, 58–85 (2005).
- "From Classical to Relativistic Mechanics: Electromagnetic
Models of the Electron." Co-authored with Matthew Mecklenburg. Pp. 65–134 in: V. F. Hendricks, K. F. Jørgensen, J. Lützen, and S. A. Pedersen (eds.), Interactions: Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy, 1860–1930. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.
- "The
Trouton Experiment, E = mc2, and a Slice of Minkowski Space-Time."
Pp. 27–54 in: Abhay Ashtekar et al. (ed.), Revisiting the Foundations
of Relativistic Physics: Festschrift in Honor of John Stachel.
Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003.
- "Relativity".
Preprint. Published: Maryanne Cline Horowitz et al., eds. Dictionary of the
History of Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004.
(Equations came out mangled in published version).
- "COI
Stories: Explanation and Evidence from Copernicus to Hockney."
Longer version of a paper in Perspectives
on Science, 10 (2002): 457-522.
- "Reconsidering
a Scientific Revolution: The Case of Einstein versus Lorentz".
Physics in Perspective 4 (2002): 421-446.
- "What
Did Einstein Know and When Did He Know It? A Besso Memo Dated
August 1913." Pp. 785–837 in: Jürgen Renn (ed)., The
Genesis of General Relativity. Vol. 2. Einstein’s Zurich
Notebook. Commentary and Essays. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.
- "Untying
the Knot: How Einstein Found His Way Back to Field Equations Discarded
in the Zurich Notebook." Co-authored with Jürgen
Renn. Pp. 839–925 in: Jürgen Renn (ed.)., The Genesis of General Relativity. Vol. 2. Einstein’s Zurich Notebook. Commentary and Essays. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.
- "Presentism
and Relativity." Co-authored with Yuri Balashov. British Journal
for the Philosophy of Science, 54 (2003): 327–346.
- Dogs, Fleas, and Tree Trunks: The Ehrenfests Marking the Territority of Boltzmann's H-Theorem. Unpublished manuscript prepared for a talk at the History of Science Society meeting in Milwaukee, WI, November 8, 2002.
- A
Comparison between Lorentz's Ether Theory and Special Relativity
in the Light of the Experiments of Trouton and Noble.
Dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, 1995. Posted on the website
of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. [Title/TOC]
[Intro]
[Intro
(Part I)] [Chapter
1] [Chapter
2] [Intro
(Part 2)] [Chapter
3] [Chapter
4] [References]
- "De tweelingparadox en relativiteit van gelijktijdigheid." Stroom 2 (10) (1988):13–25.
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Talks
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- 'No Success Like Failure …' Einstein's Quest for General Relativity, 1907–1920. Colloquium, Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, April 7, 2011.
- (Never) Mind Your Ps and Qs: Von Neumann versus Jordan on the Foundations of Quantum Theory. With Tony Duncan. New Directions in the Foundations of Physics, Washington, DC, April 30–May 2, 2010.
- Pascual Jordan and the Wave-Particle Duality of Light. History of Science and Technology Colloquium. University of Minnesota, October 30, 2009. Earlier version: HQ1, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, July 3, 2007 (Audio file).
- Van Vleck and Slater: Two Americans on the Road to Matrix Mechanics. Physics Colloquium, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, October 7, 2009.
- Drawing the Line between Kinematics and Dynamics. Symposium, "Time and Relativity," Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, October 26, 2007.
- Why Einstein Introduced the Cosmological Constant. Astrophysics Colloquium, University of Minnesota, October 20, 2006.
- Einstein: The Old Sage and the Young Turk. University of Wisconsin--Barron County, October 6, 2006.
- Common Origin Inferences (COIs). Department of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, September 14, 2005.
- How
Einstein Found His Field Equations. With Jürgen Renn. HGR7, Tenerife, Spain,
March 11, 2005.
- The
Trouton Experiment and E=mc2. AAAS, Washington, DC, February
20, 2005.
- Emergence and Interpretation of Lorentz Invariance. APS, DAMOP, Lincoln, Nebraska, May 17–21, 2005.
- The
Transition from Newtonian Particle Mechanics to Relativistic Field
Mechanics. Copenhagen, September 28, 2002.
- A
Journey More Important Than Its Destination: Einstein’s Quest
for General Relativity, 1907–1920. A series of four one-hour
lectures, held at the U of M in April 2004.
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September 4, 2011
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