Course information

The course provides an overview of the most significant episodes in the history of physics of the 19th and the first third of the 20th century. The goal is not an exhaustive historical review, but rather the highlighting and conceptual analysis of the often dramatic developments in physics during this period. Simultaneously, the course aims to correlate these developments with changes in the institutional and social framework of scientific practice. Emphasis is placed on understanding the undermining of the mechanical worldview of nature in the 19th century with the formation of electromagnetic theory, as well as on studying the evolution of quantum mechanics during the first decades of the 20th century. Part of the course content involves sketching the evolution of scientific institutions: from French institutions dependent on state power, to the humanistic German universities of the early 19th century, up to the institutions that hosted the construction of the atomic bomb.