J. L. Heilbron

Monsignor Francesco Bianchini was an player in the political, scientific, and historical arenas of early modern Europe. Among his accomplishments were writing a universal history from the creation to the fall of Assyria; discovering, excavating, and interpreting ancient buildings; and designing a papal collection of antiquities that was later partially realized in the Vatican museums. He was also responsible for confirming and publicizing Newton's theories of light and color; discovering several comets; and building the the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome.

Francesco Bianchini's World of Science, History, and Court Intrigue

The Incomparable Monsignor

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

A Study of Early Modern Physics

Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries

This lavishly illustrated book provides an unusually accessible approach to geometry by placing it in historical context. With concise discussions and carefully chosen illustrations the author brings the material to life by showing what problems motivated early geometers throughout the world. Geometry Civilized covers classical plane geometry, emphasizing the methods of Euclid but also drawing on advances made in China and India. It includes a wide range of problems, solutions, and illustrations, as well as a chapter on trigonometry, and prepares its readers for the study of solid geometry and conic sections.

History, Culture, and Technique

Geometry Civilized

The history of physics and astronomy from the Renaissance to the present day is traced in this collection of more than one hundred and fifty entries about key scientists, concepts, discoveries, technological innovations, and learned institutions.

The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy

In 1643/4 the once-famous Francis Cleyn painted the unhappy young heir of Corfe Castle, John Bankes, and his tutor, Dr Maurice Williams. The painter is now almost forgotten,the painting much neglected, and the sitters themselves have left little to mark their lives, but on the table of the painting lies a book, open to an immediately identifiable and very significant page. The representation omits the author's name and the book's title; it sits there as a code, as only viewers who had encountered the original and the characteristic figures on its frontispiece would have known its significance. The book is Galileo's Dialogue on the two chief world systems (1632), the defence of Copernican cosmology that incited the infamous clash between its author and the Church, and its presence in this painting is no accident, but instead a statement of learning, attitudes, and cosmopolitan engagement in European discourse by the painting's English subjects. Grasping hold of the clue, John Helibron deciphers the significance of this contentious book's appearance in a painting from Stuart England to unravel the interlocking threads of art history, political and religious history, and the history of science. Drawing on unexploited archival material and a wide range of printed works, he weaves together English court culture and Italian connections, as well as the astronomical and astrological knowledge propagated in contemporary almanacs and deployed in art, architecture, plays, masques, and political discourse. Heilbron also explores the biographies of Sir John Bankes (father of the sitter), Sir Maurice, and the painter, Francis Cleyn, setting them into the narrative of their rich and cultured history.

In a forgotten painting from the English Civil War

The Ghost of Galileo

Niels Bohr, who pioneered the quantum theory of the atom, had a broad conception of his obligations as a physicist. They included not only a responsibility for the consequences of his work for the wider society, but also a compulsion to apply the philosophy he deduced from his physics to improving ordinary people's understanding of the moral universe they inhabit. In some of these concerns Bohr resembled Einstein, although Einstein could not accept what he called the "tranquilizing philosophy" with which Bohr tried to resolve such ancient conundrums as the nature (or possibility) of free will. In this Very Short Introduction John Heilbron draws on sources never before presented in English to cover the life and work of one of the most creative physicists of the 20th century. In addition to his role as a scientist, Heilbron considers Bohr as a statesman and Danish cultural icon, who built scientific institutions and pushed for the extension of international cooperation in science to all nation states. As a humanist he was concerned with the cultivation of all sides of the individual, and with the complementary contributions of all peoples to the sum of human culture. Throughout, Heilbron considers how all of these aspects of Bohr's personality influenced his work, as well as the science that made him, in the words of Sir Henry Dale, President of the Royal Society of London, probably the "first among all the men of all countries who are now active in any department of science." ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Niels Bohr: a Very Short Introduction

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? This Very Short Introduction introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the earth while their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the "House of Wisdom" in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe's first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; and the increasingly specialized world of 20th and 21st century science. Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology - and the implications for humankind's self-understanding - Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures and societies that have nurtured it over the centuries. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The History of Physics

Tore Frängsmyr

Robin E. Rider

The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century

Heilbron takes in the landscape of culture, learning, religion, science, theology, and politics of late Renaissance Italy to produce a richer and more rounded view of Galileo, his scientific thinking, and the company he kept.

Galileo

In this moving and eloquent portrait, Heilbron describes how the founder of quantum theory rose to the pinnacle of German science. He shows how Planck suffered morally and intellectually as his lifelong habit of service to his country and to physics was confronted by the realities of World War I and the brutalities of the Third Reich.

Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science, With a New Afterword

The Dilemmas of an Upright Man

The appearance of Galileo's Dialogue in a forgotten painting launches John Heilbron's exploration of science and culture in Stuart England, and its deep connections with continental Europe. Ranging across art history, politics, and religion, he unravels the painting's mysteries, setting its sitters and painter against their rich cultural backdrop.

In a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War

A biography of the scientist considered to be the father of nuclear physics for his development of the nuclear theory of the atom in 1911 and discovery of alpha and beta rays and protons.

And the Explosion of Atoms

Ernest Rutherford

Between 1650 and 1750, four Catholic churches were the best solar observatories in the world. Built to fix an unquestionable date for Easter, they also housed instruments that threw light on the disputed geometry of the solar system, and so, within sight of the altar, subverted Church doctrine about the order of the universe. A tale of politically canny astronomers and cardinals with a taste for mathematics, "The Sun in the Church" tells how these observatories came to be, how they worked, and what they accomplished. It describes Galileo's political overreaching, his subsequent trial for heresy, and his slow and steady rehabilitation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. And it offers an enlightening perspective on astronomy, Church history, and religious architecture, as well as an analysis of measurements testing the limits of attainable accuracy, undertaken with rudimentary means and extraordinary zeal. Above all, the book illuminates the niches protected and financed by the Catholic Church in which science and mathematics thrived. Superbly written, "The Sun in the Church" provides a magnificent corrective to long-standing oversimplified accounts of the hostility between science and religion.

J. L. Heilbron

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