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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. Most of my
work so far has been in the history of relativity theory. My dissertation
focused on the transition from classical to special relativistic mechanics,
and I worked for several years for the Einstein
Papers Project annotating various documents that are important for
understanding Einstein's route to general relativity. I am a regular visitor
at the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science where I am a member of
a research group led by Prof. Jürgen Renn for history of modern physics. We want to use the same
techniques that we used to study the development of relativity theory (with
a strong emphasis on the conceptual analysis of both published and unpublished
material) to study the development of quantum theory in the first
few decades of the 20th century. Guiding my research in general are broader
philosophical questions about scientific methodology and scientific explanation.
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Papers
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- "Drawing the Line Between Kinematics and Dynamics in Special Relativity." Preprint. Based on talk at symposium "Time and Relativity," Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, October 26–27, 2007. Related paper.
- "Pascual Jordan’s Resolution of the Conundrum of the Wave-Particle Duality of Light." Co-authored with Tony Duncan. Preprint (Based on our talk at HQ1)
- "On the Verge of Umdeutung: John Van Vleck and the Correspondence Principle." Co-authored with Tony Duncan. Part One; Part Two. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 61 (2007): 553–624, 625–671. Related talks: 1, 2.
- "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. Related talk.
- "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. Related talk (in streaming video).
- "Relativity".
In: Maryanne Cline Horowitz et al., eds. Dictionary of the
History of Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004.
(The equations all came out mangled in the published version).
- "COI
Stories: Explanation and Evidence from Copernicus to Hockney."
Longer version of a paper in Perspectives
on Science, 10 (2002): 457-522. Related talk.
- "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. Related talk.
- "Presentism
and Relativity" (with Yuri Balashov). British Journal
for the Philosophy of Science, 54 (2003): 327–346. Related paper.
- 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]
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Talks
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- Drawing the Line between Kinematics and Dynamics. Symposium, "Time and Relativity," Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, October 26, 2007. Related paper.
- Van Vleck and Slater: Two Americans on the Road to Matrix Mechanics. Colloquium, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, October 5, 2007. Related paper: Pt. 1, Pt. 2.
- Pascual Jordan’s Resolution of the Conundrum of the Wave-Particle Duality of Light. With Anthony Duncan. HQ1, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, July 3, 2007 (audio file). Related paper.
- 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.
- John Van Vleck and the Dawn of Quantum Mechanics in Minnesota. Physics and Astronomy Colloquium, University of Minnesota, September 13, 2006. Related paper: Pt. 1, Pt. 2.
- Common Origin Inferences (COIs). Department of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, September 14, 2005. Related paper.
- How
Einstein Found His Field Equations. With Jürgen Renn. HGR7, Tenerife, Spain,
March 11, 2005. Related paper.
- The
Trouton Experiment and E=mc2. AAAS, Washington, DC, February
20, 2005. (View version in Berne, July 7, 2005 in streaming video). Related paper.
- 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. Related papers: 1, 2, 3.
- 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. Related papers: 1, 2.
- God
Does Not Play Dice: He Just Does Not Make Up His Mind. Minneapolis,
January 24, 2002.
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February 20, 2008
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