Trajectories in the History and Historiography of Physics in the Twentieth Century

Oppenheimer J. Robert , “Speech to the association of Los Alamos scientists, November 2, 1945”, in Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and recollections, ed. by Smith Alice Kimball Weiner Charles (Cambridge, MA, 1945), 315–25, pp. 315–16. Historians do not support Oppenheimer's view of the relations between science and religion in the renaissance.

The different elements of this pathway were taken up relatively early by historians of physics, with an early focus on Germany, discussed below, that gradually gave way to studies of the rise of physics in the U.S. (and of theory in particular), first framed by Kevles's deft treatment of the relations between academic physics and national politics. We have a history of the laboratory, too. See Kevles Daniel J. , The physicists: The history of a scientific community in modern America, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA and London, 1995); Schweber S. S. , “The empiricist temper regnant: Theoretical physics in the United States, 1920–1950”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, xvii (1986), 1986–98; Heilbron John Lewis Seidel Robert W. , Lawrence and his laboratory: A history of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, i (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1989). Oppenheimer, like Einstein and Heisenberg, has also been subject to a particularly rich range of treatments from analytical historical accounts to popular biographies. See Cassidy David C. , J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American century (New York, 2005); Bird Kai Sherwin Martin J. , American prometheus: The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York, 2006); Thorpe Charles , Oppenheimer: The tragic intellect (Chicago, 2006); Schweber Silvan S. , Einstein and Oppenheimer: The meaning of genius (Cambridge, MA, 2008).

As cited in Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 2), 256.

Sarton George , “Chronique et correspondance”, Isis, i (1913), 95–113, on pp. 95–97; Rosenfeld L. , “La theorie des couleurs de newton et ses adversaires”, Isis, ix (1927), 1927–65; idem, “Le probleme logique de la definition des nombres irrationnels”, Isis, ix (1927), 1927–58; idem, “René-fran&çois de sluse et le problème des tangentes”, Isis, x (1928), 1928–34; idem, “Le premier conflit entre la théorie ondulatoire et la théorie corpusculaire de la lumière”, Isis, xi (1928), 1928–22.

We don't have anything like a comprehensive understanding of these works. For a recent overview that focuses on the popular physics boom in the late twentieth century see Leane Elizabeth , Reading popular physics: Disciplinary skirmishes and textual strategies (Aldershot, 2007); for a study of work between research and popular contexts, see Kaiser David , How the hippies saved physics: Science, counterculture, and the quantum revival (New York, 2011).

Miller Arthur I. , Einstein, Picasso: Space, time, and the beauty that causes havoc (New York, 2001).

Einstein Albert , Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie: Gemeinverständlich (Braunschweig, 1917).

On Einstein's distinctive position after World War I see the works cited below and Staley Richard , “Interdisciplinary atomism? Exploring twentieth-century culture through Einstein (essay review)”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxvi (2003), 221–30.

Einstein , op. cit. (ref. 7), v–vi.

Navarro Jaume Badino Massimiliano , (eds), Research and pedagogy: A history of quantum physics and its early textbooks (forthcoming); Schirrmacher Arne , “From Kosmos to Koralle: On the culture of science reading in imperial and Weimar Germany”, in Weimar culture and quantum mechanics: Selected papers by Paul Forman and contemporary perspectives on the Forman thesis, ed. by Carson Cathryn Kojevnikov Alexei Trischler Helmuth (London and Singapore, 2011), 433–52; Porter Theodore M. , “The death of the object: Fin de siècle philosophy of physics”, in Modernist impulses in the human sciences, 1870–1930, ed. by Ross Dorothy (Baltimore, 1994), 128–51; Whitworth Michael H. , Einstein's wake: Relativity, metaphor, and modernist literature (Oxford, 2001).

Smyth Henry DeWolf , Atomic energy for military purposes: The official report on the development of the atomic bomb under the auspices of the United States government, 1940–1945 (Princeton, 1945).

For the argument on secrecy, and the importance of the book in the U.S.S.R. see respectively, Schwartz Rebecca Press , ” The making of the history of the atomic bomb: Henry DeWolf Smyth and the historiography of the Manhattan Project” (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Princeton Univ., 2008); Gordin McHael D. , Red cloud at dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the end of the atomic monopoly (New York, 2009), 93–105.

For a recent example, see Holl Jack M. Hewlett Richard G. Harris Ruth R. , Argonne national laboratory, 1946–96 (Urbana, 1997). And on writing classified history, Fitzpatrick Anne , “From behind the fence: Threading the labyrinths of classified historical research”, in The historiography of contemporary science, technology, and medicine: Writing recent science, ed. by Doel Ronald E. Söderqvist Thomas (London and New York, 2006), 67–80.

Dupree A. Hunter Kuhn Thomas S. , “Teaching the history of science”, Isis, xlix (1958), 172–3.

From the first conference see Cohen I. Bernard , “Conservation and the concept of electric charge: An aspect of philosophy in relation to physics in the nineteenth century”, in Critical problems in the history of science, ed. by Clagett Marshall (Madison, 1959), 357–83. In the second, the physical sciences were represented by Crombie A. C. , “Quantification in medieval physics”, Isis, lii (1961), 1961–60; Kuhn Thomas S. , “The function of measurement in modern physical science”, Isis, lii (1961), 1961–93; Guerlac Henry , “Quantification in chemistry”, Isis, lii (1961), 1961–214.

Hewlett R. G. , “A pilot study in contemporary scientific history”, Isis, liii (1962), 31–38; Hewlett Richard G. Anderson Oscar , The new world: A history of the Atomic Energy Commission 1939–1946 (University Park, PA, 1962).

For early studies of Soviet science see Joravsky David , “Soviet views on the history of science”, Isis, xlvi (1955), 3–13; Joravsky David , Soviet marxism and natural science, 1917–1932 (New York, 1961); Graham Loren R. , “A Soviet marxist view of structural chemistry: The theory of resonance controversy”, Isis, lv (1964), 1964–31; Graham Loren R. , The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party, 1927–1932 (Princeton, 1967). More recently Paul Josephson and Alexi Kojevnikov have offered studies of Soviet physics in particular. Woodruff and Bork focused on electrodynamics; Buchdahl wrote on Norman Campbell but pursued primarily philosophical interests. Klein pioneered historical studies of Planck, Einstein, and Ehrenfest, Badash addressed radioactivity, and Heilbron's early work was on Moseley and atomic theory.

De Sofia Price Derek J. , “A guide to graduate study and research in the history of science and medicine”, Isis, lviii (1967), 385–95. Such resources make it easier to gain an overview of U.S. research than scholarship elsewhere, but from early on scholarship based in Europe and Japan, and, increasingly, Asia and South America has also been important.

Kuhn addressed the multivalence of the concept paradigm in the postscript to the second and later editions. Kuhn Thomas S. , The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd edn (Chicago, 1996).

Schaffer Simon , “Contextualizing the canon”, in The disunity of science: Boundaries, contexts, and power, ed. by Galison Peter Stump David J. (Stanford, 1996), 207–30.

Fuller Steve , Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history for our times (Chicago and London, 2000); Novick Peter , That noble dream: The “objectivity question” and the American historical profession (Cambridge and New York, 1988). See also Hollinger David A. , In the American province: Studies in the history and historiography of ideas (Bloomington, 1985).

See the “Introduction to the 2011 edition” in Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 2011), xi–xlx.

Holton Gerald , Thematic origins of scientific thought: Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge, MA and London, 1988).

Staley Richard , Einstein's generation: The origins of the relativity revolution (Chicago, 2008), chap. 8. Philosophers of science often thought only the context of justification was open to fully rational enquiry.

The latter has now been substantially deepened by studies that illustrate both the attention Eddington paid to the media, the Quaker values that informed his work, and the role Dyson played (well within typical standards of data treatment). Earman John Glymour Clark , “Relativity and eclipses: The British expeditions of 1919 and their predecessors”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, xi (1980), 49–85; Sponsel Alistair , “Constructing a “revolution in science”: The campaign to promote a favourable reception for the 1919 solar eclipse experiments”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxv (2002), 2002–67; Stanley Matthew , “An expedition to heal the wounds of war': The 1919 eclipse and Eddington as quaker adventurer”, Isis, xciv (2003), 2003–89; Kennefick Daniel , “Not only because of theory: Dyson, Eddington and the competing myths of the 1919 eclipse expedition”, in Einstein and the changing worldviews of physics, ed. by Lehner Christoph , Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel (New York and Dordrecht, 2012), 201–32.

The demands of a comprehensive biography have been too steep for professional historians of science. Apart from physicist-historian Abraham Pais's Subtle is the Lord… (Oxford, 1982), that field has been left to journalists and writers such as Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A biography (New York, 1997); Overbye Dennis , Einstein in love: A scientific romance (New York, 2000); Isaacson Walter , Einstein: His life and universe (London, 2007).

Journal articles and edited books have been characteristic of the engagement in technical detail, and accounts have more often been philosophical investigations of the subject matter than case studies of conceptual change. Interpretations of particular facets of Einstein's physical thought abound in Archives for history of exact science, Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, and the volumes of the Einstein Studies series.

Hentschel Klaus , Interpretationen und Fehlinterpretationen der speziellen und der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie durch Zeitgenossen Albert Einsteins (Basel and Boston, 1990). On politics and opponents see especially Rowe David E. Schulmann Robert (eds), Einstein on politics: His private thoughts and public stands on nationalism, Zionism, war, peace, and the bomb (Princeton, 2007); Wazeck Milena , Einsteins Gegner: Die öffentliche Kontroverse um die Relativitätstheorie in den 1920er Jahren (Frankfurt am Main, 2009). On German physics see Hentschel Klaus , Physics and National Socialism: An anthology of primary sources, trans. by Hentschel Ann M. (Basel and Boston, 1996).

Seth has provided an insightful discussion of the major historiographical directions underlying the “cultural turn” in Seth Suman , “The history of physics after the cultural turn”, Historical studies in the natural sciences, xli (2011), 112–22.

Warwick Andrew , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago and London, 2003); Click Thomas F. (ed.), The comparative reception of relativity (Dordrecht and Boston, 1987).

See, for example, Kaiser David , Drawing theories apart: The dispersion of Feynman diagrams in postwar physics (Chicago, 2005); Kaiser David (ed.), Pedagogy and the practice of science: Historical and contemporary perspectives (Cambridge, MA, 2005); Kaiser David , “A ‘psi’ is just a ‘psi’? Pedagogy, practice, and the reconstitution of general relativity, 1942–1975”, Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, xxix (1998), 1998–38; Kaiser David , “When fields collide”, Scientific American (2007), 62–69. See also Seth Suman , Crafting the quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the practice of theory, 1890–1926 (Cambridge, MA, 2010).

Seth , Ibid.

Galison Peter , Einstein's clocks, Poincaré's maps: Empires of time (New York and London, 2003).

Galison Peter , How experiments end (Chicago and London, 1987); Galison Peter , Image and logic: The material culture of microphysics (Chicago and London, 1997). Along with Allan Franklin, Galison had helped open up the study of experiment in particle physics, both combining historical and philosophical interests. See Franklin Allan , The neglect of experiment (Cambridge and New York, 1986).

Stanley Matthew , Practical mystic: Religion, science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago, 2007).

Staley , Einstein's generation (ref. 24).

Forman Paul , “Weimar culture, causality and quantum theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile intellectual environment”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iii (1971), 1–116.

McCormmach Russell , “Editor's foreword”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, i (1969), vii–ix, on pp. vii–viii.

For the early reaction see Hendry John , “Weimar culture and quantum causality”, History of science, xviii (1980), 155–80. On Exner see Coen Deborah R. , Vienna in the age of uncertainty: Science, liberalism, and private life (Chicago, 2007); Stöltzner Michael , “Franz Serafin Exner's indeterminist theory of culture”, Physics in perspective, iv (2002), 2002–319.

For more recent discussions, contextualizing both Forman's work and his understanding of the period, see the contributions to Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, xxxi (2008), and Carson Cathryn Kojevnikov Alexei Trischler Helmuth (eds), Weimar culture and quantum mechanics: Selected papers by Paul Forman and contemporary perspectives on the Forman thesis (London and Singapore, 2011). Pickering's study of the high energy physics community provided a similar stalking horse, but also reflects the intervening sophistication of the sociology of scientific knowledge: Its historical claims proved much less controversial. Pickering Andrew , Constructing quarks: A sociological history of particle physics (Edinburgh, 1984).

Beller Mara , Quantum dialogue: The making of a revolution (Chicago and London, 1999); Camilleri Kristian , Heisenberg and the interpretation of quantum mechanics: The physicist as philosopher (New York, 2009).

Kuhn Thomas S. , Black-body theory and the quantum discontinuity 1894–1912, reprint of the 1978 edn (Chicago and London, 1987). For an example of the responses, see Klein Martin J. Shimony Abner Pinch Trevor , “Paradigm lost? A review symposium”, Isis, lxx (1979), 1979–40.

Needell Allan A. , “Irreversibility and the failure of classical dynamics: Max Planck's work on the quantum theory, 1900–1915” (PhD, Yale Univ., 1980); Darrigol Olivier , “The historians' disagreements over the meaning of Planck's quantum”, Centaurus, xliii (2001), 2001–39; Gearhart Clayton A. , “Planck, the quantum, and the historians”, Physics in perspective, iv (2002), 2002–215; Badino Massimiliano , “The odd couple: Boltzmann, Planck and the application of statistics to physics (1900–1913)”, Annalen der Physik, xiix (2009), 2009–101.

Heilbron J. L. , The dilemmas of an upright man: Max Planck as spokesman for German science (Berkeley, 1986); Cahan David , An institute for an empire: The physikalisch-technische Reichsanstalt, 1871–1918 (Cambridge and New York, 1989).

Staley , Einstein's generation (ref. 24), chaps 9–10.

Merton responded to both Hessen and Max Weber, refuting the former, and understood his sociology to concern the conditions that enabled the proper development of science rather than shaping its intellectual content: “Specific discoveries and inventions belong to the internal history of science and are largely independent of factors other than the purely scientific.” Merton Robert K. , “Science, technology and society in seventeenth century England”, Osiris, iv (1938), 360–632, on p. 434. See also Shapin Steven , “Understanding the Merton thesis”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 1988–605.

Freudenthal Gideon McLaughlin Peter , (eds), The social and economic roots of the scientific revolution: Texts by Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann (New York, 2009); Graham Loren R. , “The socio-political roots of Boris Hessen: Soviet marxism and the history of science”, Social studies of science, xv (1985), 1985–22. Joravsky had earlier analyzed the framework for the debates in the Soviet Union, and Josephson later focused on physics: Joravsky, Soviet marxism and natural science, 1917–1932; Josephson Paul R. , Physics and politics in revolutionary Russia (Berkeley, 1991).

Forman Paul , “Behind quantum electronics: National security as basis for physical research in the United States, 1940–1960”, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences, xviii (1987), 149–229. Forman has often raised directly moral questions of both scientists and historians, addressing the latter in particular in Forman Paul , “Independence, not transcendence, for the historian of science”, Isis, lxxxii (1991), 1991–86; Forman Paul , “The primacy of science in modernity, of technology in postmodernity, and of ideology in the history of technology”, History and technology, xxiii (2007), 2007–152. See also Carson Kojevnikov Trischler (eds), Weimar culture and quantum mechanics (ref. 40).

Hughes Jeff , “Radioactivity and nuclear physics”, in The Cambridge history of science, v: The modern physical and mathematical sciences, ed. by Nye Mary Jo (Cambridge and New York, 2003), 350–74, p. 351.

Hughes Jeff , “‘Modernists with a vengeance’: Changing cultures of theory in nuclear science, 1920–1930”, Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, xxix (1998), 339–67; Hughes Jeff , “Plasticine and valves: Industry, instrumentation and the emergence of nuclear physics”, in Invisible industrialist: Manufactures and the production of scientific knowledge, ed. by Gaudillière Jean-Paul Löwy Liana (London and New York, 1998), 58–101; Hughes , “Radioactivity and nuclear physics” (ref. 49); Rentetzi Maria , “Trafficking materials and gendered experimental practices: Radium research in early 20th century Vienna” (Gutenburg, 2007). Their accounts build on and depart from the earlier work of Stuewer, Brown, Achinstein and Hannaway.

The early official histories of the Manhattan Project and the AEC were followed by the Pulitzer Prize winning account of Rhodes, and hosts of more specialist and innovative approaches. See, for example, Rhodes Richard , The making of the atom bomb (London, 1988); Hughes Thomas Parke , American genesis: A century of invention and technological enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (New York, 1989), chap. 8; Hales Peter Bacon , Atomic spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Champaign-Urbana, 1997); Masco Joseph , The nuclear borderlands: The Manhattan Project in post-cold war New Mexico (Princeton, 2006); Gordin Michael D. , Five days in August: How World War II became a nuclear war (Princeton, 2007). On different national projects see Walker Mark , Nazi science: Myth, truth, and the German atomic bomb (New York and London, 1995); Holloway David , Stalin and the bomb: The Soviet Union and atomic energy 1939–1956 (New Haven, 1994); Kojevnikov Alexei , “The making of the Soviet bomb and the shaping of cold war science”, in Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial studies and reflections, ed. by Carson Cathryn Hollinger David A. (Berkeley, 2006), 129–45.

Gordin , Red cloud at dawn (ref. 12).

Traweek Sharon , Beamtimes and lifetimes: The world of high energy physicists (Cambridge, MA, 1988); Galison , How experiments end (ref. 34); Galison , Image and logic (ref. 34); Galison Peter Hevly Bruce (eds), Big science: The growth of large-scale research (Stanford, 1992); Hermann Armin , History of CERN, i: Launching the European organization for nuclear research (Amsterdam and New York, 1987); Hermann Armin , History of CERN, ii: Building and running the laboratory, 1954–1965 (Amsterdam and New York, 1990); Krige John (ed.), History of CERN, iii (Amsterdam and New York, 1996).

See the studies of Oppenheimer and Kaiser's work cited above, but also Leslie Stuart W. , The cold war and American science: The military-industrial-academic complex at MIT and Stanford (New York, 1993); Wang Jessica , American science in an age of anxiety: Scientists, anticommunism, and the cold war (Chapel Hill, 1999); Badash Lawrence , A nuclear winter's tale: Science and politics in the 1980s (Cambridge and London, 2009).

Gusterson Hugh , Nuclear rites: A weapons laboratory at the end of the cold war (Berkeley, 1996); Gusterson Hugh , People of the bomb: Portraits of America's nuclear complex (Minneapolis, 2004); Galison Peter , “Removing knowledge”, Critical inquiry, xxxi (2004), 2004–40; Dennis McHael Aaron , “Secrecy and science revisited: From politics to historical practice and back”, in The historiography of contemporary science, technology, and medicine: Writing recent science, ed. by Doel Ronald E. Söderqvist Thomas (London, 2006), 172–84; Wellerstein Alex , “Patenting the bomb: Nuclear weapons, intellectual property, and technological control”, Isis. xcix (2008), 57–87.

Mitchell Gordon R. , Strategic deception: Rhetoric, science, and politics in missile defense advocacy (East Lansing, 2000); Kevles , The physicists (ref. 2), Preface.

Anderson argues that broken symmetries render inert but macroscopic bodies not only more than but very different from the sum of their parts; with the result that although consistent with them, their properties cannot be constructed from the laws of particle physics alone. Notable exceptions to the general neglect include Bromberg and Johnston writing on optics, lasers and holography and Eckert, Hoddeson and others on condensed matter physics. Eckert argues that a Kuhnian model would not have occurred to researchers basing their view of science on the development of solid-state and plasma physics. See Anderson P. W. , “More is different”, Science, clxxvii (1972), 393–6; Bromberg Joan Lisa , The laser in America, 1950–1970 (Cambridge, MA, 1991); Johnston Sean , Holographic visions: A history of new science (Oxford and New York, 2006); Hoddeson Lillian (ed.), Out of the crystal maze: Chapters from the history of solid-state physics (Oxford and New York, 1992); Eckert McHael , “Plasmas and solid-state physics”, in The Cambridge history of science, v: The modern physical and mathematical sciences, ed. by Nye Mary Jo (Cambridge and New York, 2003), 413–28.

The cultivation of gravitational wave research for over 40 years without a detection raises some similar issues. Collins H. M. , Gravity's shadow: The search for gravitational waves (Chicago, 2004); Collins H. M. , Gravity's ghost: Scientific discovery in the twenty-first century (Chicago and London, 2010).

LeGrand Homer E. , Drifting continents and shifting theories (Cambridge and New York, 1988); Oreskes Naomi , The rejection of continental drift: Theory and method in American earth science (New York, 1999); Oreskes Naomi Doel Ronald E. , “Physics and chemistry of the earth”, in The Cambridge history of science, v: Modern physical and mathematical sciences, ed. by Nye Mary Jo (Cambridge and New York, 2003), 538–52. See also Good Gregory A. (ed.), The earth, the heavens and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (Washington, D.C., 1994).

See Gavroglu Kostas Simoes Ana , Neither physics nor chemistry: A history of quantum chemistry (Cambridge, MA, 2012); Sloan Phillip R. Fogel D. Brandon (eds), Creating a physical biology: The three-man paper and early molecular biology (Chicago, 2011); Keller Evelyn Fox , “Physics and the emergence of molecular biology: A history of cognitive and political synergy”, Journal of the history of biology, xxiii (1990), 1990–409; Kay Lily E. , “Quanta of life: Atomic physics and the reincarnation of phage”, History and philosophy of the life sciences, xiv (1992), 1992–21; Kragh Helge , Conceptions of cosmos. From myths to the accelerating universe: A history of cosmology (Oxford and New York, 2007); Kragh Helge , Higher speculations: Grand theories and failed revolutions in physics and cosmology (Oxford and New York, 2011).

For an overview of biology and observations on the wars see Abir-Am Pnina G. , “The molecular transformation of twentieth-century biology”, in Science in the twentieth century, ed. by Krige John Pestre Dominique (Amsterdam, 1997), 495–524.

A recent study dates modern meteorology to the Meteorology Project and post-war rise of numerical weather prediction (although Friedman's work on meteorological theory would suggest a different chronology and aeronautical research was also critical). Focusing on meteorologists, Harper notes that previous accounts have centred either on the development of calculational techniques, or interpreted the events as a minor sideline to von Neumann's development of the computer, and describes these as physics-centred approaches. Yet they surely represent only a relatively minor and idiosyncratic portion of physicists' engagement in weather-related projects in the preceding period; more systematic studies of the range of teaching and research undertaken in physics departments are necessary to gain a clearer perspective. See Friedman Robert Marc , Appropriating the weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the construction of a modern meteorology (Ithaca, 1989); Harper Kristine , Weather by the numbers: The genesis of modern meteorology (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 3; Conway Erik M. , Atmospheric science at NASA: A history (Baltimore, 2008).

For example, not expecting to find it in the heart of analytic matter physics, Galison and Assmus's important paper on the cloud chamber overlooked the existence of a meteorological tradition within the Cavendish Laboratory, one that provided a mimetic context for C. T. R. Wilson's experiments with a cotton-wool filter. See Staley Richard , “Fog, dust and rising air: Understanding cloud formation, cloud chambers, and the role of meteorology in Cambridge physics in the late 19th century”, in Intimate universality: Local and global themes in the history of weather and climate, ed. by Fleming James Rodger Jankovic Vladimir Coen Deborah R. (Sagamore Beach, 2006), 93–113.

Van Allen James to Killian James R. , 21 February 1959 with memorandum of 17 February 1959 (quote on p. 2), copy in the Nuclear Testing Archive, Las Vegas, NV, document NV0309054, accessed on 18 July 2012 through Alex Wellerstein's blog Restricted Data at http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/2012/05/23/weekly-document-declassifying-argus-1959/; Revelle Roger Suess Hans E. , “Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO₂ during the past decades”, Tellus, ix (1957), 18–27, on p. 19.

Fleming James Rodger , Historical perspectives on climate change (New York, 1998); Weart Spencer R. , The discovery of global warming (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

There is a correlate in the ‘five-sigma’ certainty that allowed groups at the CERN Large Hadron Collider to announce the discovery of a Higgs-Boson-like particle in July 2012.

Edwards Paul N. , A vast machine: Computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming (Cambridge, MA, 2010). See also Turner Roger , “Weathering heights: The emergence of aeronautical meteorology as an infrastructural science”, Publicly accessible Penn dissertations, Paper 147 (2010).

Oreskes Naomi Conway Erik M. , Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming (New York, 2010).

In the case of climate change, in addition to Michael Mann's ‘hockey stick’ history of the last thousand years, the early anthropogenic hypothesis that William Ruddiman has advanced is particularly notable. The attempt to explain anomalies in concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane that began 8,000 and 5,000 years ago by early agriculture and rice production may change our understanding of the character and extent of these activities in early human history.

Bacciagaluppi Guido Valentini Antony , Quantum theory at the crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay conference (Cambridge and New York, 2009).

Cushing James T. , Quantum mechanics: Historical contingency and the Copenhagen hegemony (Chicago, 1994).

See Staley Richard , “Discontinuous memory in the making of quantum mechanics”, Historical studies in the natural sciences, xli (2011), 447–56.

Cao Tian Yu Schweber Silvan S. , “The conceptual foundations and the philosophical aspects of renormalization theory”, Synthese, xcvii (1993), 33–108. Note also the current work of Christian Joas.

Galison describes an attractive methodological framework for recovering that work and the richest single model we have for the endeavour may be his Image and logic. But he has sometimes resolved shared traditions into opposing philosophical perspectives, without recognizing their interrelations.