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10.—Understanding Physics Through Its History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2012

Samuel Devons
Samuel Devons
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Columbia University
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Extract

It is a great pleasure to join in this tribute to Professor Norman Feather: My recollections of him as teacher, friend and colleague extend back nearly forty years. I recall attending, as a Cambridge undergraduate, his lectures on ‘Properties of Matter’ (what an archaic and nostalgic flavour that title has now!); and hearing him describe his pioneering experiments on the properties of the neutron. He was my doctoral thesis examiner; and later when he was Editor of the Cambridge monographs, it was at his suggestion, and with his help and encouragement, that I made my first essay as an author. I was privileged to succeed my former teachers, Professor C. D. Ellis and Professor Feather, at Trinity College; and in the 1950s I was regularly and warmly welcomed at Edinburgh, the ambivalent benevolence of my role as ‘External Examiner’ notwithstanding.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A: Mathematics , Volume 70 , 1972 , pp. 95 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1972

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References

References to Literature

[1]Feather, Norman: 1959 (a) An Introduction to the Physics of Mass Length and Time. Feather, Norman: 1961 (b) Vibrations and Waves. Feather, Norman: 1968 (c) Electricity and Matter. Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
[2]Devons, S. and Hartmann, L., 1970. ‘A History of Physics Laboratory’, Physics Today, 23, 44–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3]Newton, Isaac. Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica (‘The Principia’). (Motte's Translation 1729, Ed. Cajori, F., Univ. Calif. Press, 1947.) Theorem XXXV (reproduced in Text). Theorem XXXVI (Water Waves), 374–375. Theorem XXXVII, etc. (Propagation of Sound), 375–384.Google Scholar
[4]Bernoulli, Daniel. Hydrodynamica (1737). (English Translation 1968.) Extension of Newton's Theorem XXXV, 128–131. Dover.Google Scholar
[5]Truesdell, C., 1968. Essays in the History of Mechanics. Especially 90–92 and 144–146. Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[6] Ref. [1] (b), Ch. 7.Google Scholar