Contributors

Fabio Bevilacqua is Associate Professor of the History of Physics in the Department of Physics "A. Volta" at the University of Pavia. He has published articles on the history of nineteenth-century physics and on the use of the history of science in science education, as well as a book entitled The Principle of Conservation of Energy and the History of Classical Electromagnetic Theory (Pavia: LaGoliardica Pavese, 1983). Giinter Bierhalter, an independent scholar living in Pfonheim, in the Federal Republic of , is the author of articles on nine- teenth-century thermodynamics, including attempts to establish the mechanical foundations of thermodynamics and the problem of ir- reversibility. His principal scholarly interests are the history of the foundations of mechanics, extremum principles in physics, thermo- dynamics, and quantum physics. He is currently working on the history of nineteenth-century electrodynamics. Jed 2. Buchwald is Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of and Director of the Dib- ner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. In addition to numerous articles on the history of nineteenth-century electro- magnetism and optics, he is also the author of two book-length studies: From Maxwell to Microphysics. Aspects of Electromagnetic Theory in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), and The Rise of the Wave Theory xvi Contributors of Light. Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Cen- tury (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). He has recently completed a book entitled The Creation of Scientijic Efects: Heinrich Hertz and Electric Waves (forthcoming). David Cahan is Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research concerns the history of physics and the social history of science from the early Enlightenment to the pres- ent. He has published articles on physics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany; has written a book entitled An Institute for an Empire: The Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, 1871-1918 (Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle: Cambridge University Press, 1989);and has edited Letters ofHermann von Helmholtz to His Parents: The Medical Education of a German Scientist, 1837-1846 (: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993). Robert DiSalle is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. His research concerns the history and philosophy of science, especially historical and philosophical issues connected with the foundations of mechanics and the development of general relativ- ity. He is currently working on a critical account of space-time prin- ciples in the history of physics. Gary Hatjield is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Penn- sylvania, where he is also a member of the Graduate Group in History and Sociology of Science. He is the author of numerous articles in the history of philosophy and science and in the philosophy of psychology, as well as a book entitled The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). He is currently researching the development of the dis- tinction between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften by Helmholtz and his neo-Kantian contemporaries. Michael Heidelberger teaches philosophy at the University of Frei- burg, in the Federal Republic of Germany. He is the co-author of Natur und Erfahrung, 2nd ed. (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1985), a study of the Scientific Revolution; and the co-editor of and a contrib- utor to The Probabilistic Revolution, vol. 1: Ideas in History (Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). He has published numerous articles in the history and philosophy of science, and has recently published a book entitled Die innere Seite der Natur: Gustav Theodor Fechners wissenschaftlich-philosophischeWeltauffassung (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1993). Frederic L. Holmes is Avalon Professor and Chairman of the Section of the History of Medicine in the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the author of several books and numerous articles in the history of chemistry and the life sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth Contributors xvii centuries. Most recently he has written Hans Krebs: The Formation qf a ScientiJic Llfe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199 1) and Bet ween Biology and Medicine: The Formation of Intermediary Metabolism (Office for History of Science and Technology [Berkeley], 1991). He is presently working on Justus von Liebig and early nineteenth-century German chemistry; on topics in the early years of molecular biology; and, with Kathryn M. Olesko, on Hermann von Helmholtz's early scientific career, from which their essay in this volume is drawn. Walter Kaiser holds the Lehrstuhl for the History of Technology at the Rheinisch-Westglische Technische Hochschule Aachen. He has written articles on the history of electrodynamics and solid state phys- ics, and, more generally, in the history and philosophy of science and the history of technology. He is the author of Theorien der Elektro- dynamik im 19. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 198 1); has edited Ludwig Boltzmann's Vorlesungen uber Maxwells Theorie der Elektricitat und des Lichtes (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Ver- lagsanstalt, 1982); and has co-authored the Propylaen Technikge- schichte, vol. 5 1914-1 990 (Berlin: Propylaen Verlag, 1992). Helge Kragh is a researcher at the Roskilde University Centre in , where he works with a project on the history of technology and culture in Denmark since 1750. He was associate professor of physics and history at Cornell University from 1987 to 1989, and has written articles and books on the history of modern physical science. His most recent publications include An Introduction to the Histo- riography of Science (Cambridge, London, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and Dirac: A ScientiJic Biography (Cambridge, New York, and Port Chester: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Richard L. Kremer is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College. He has edited Letters ofHermann von Helmholtz to His Wife, 1847-1859 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990), and is completing a book- length monograph on the "culture of experiment" in physiology at German universities between 1800 and 1865. Timothy Lenoir is Associate Professor of History and of History of Science in the Program in History of Science at Stanford University. He has published numerous articles on the history of the life sciences in the nineteenth century as well as a book: The Strategy of Lzfe: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth-Centurv German Biology (Dor- drecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1982; paperback reprint: Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). Kathryn M. Olesko is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University. She is the author of Physics as a Calling: Discipline and Practice in the Konigsherg Seminar .for Physics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 199 1 ) and the editor of Science in Germany: xviii Contributors

Problems at the Intersection of Intellectual and Institutional History (Osiris 5 [1989]). She is currently writing a book entitled The Meaning of Precision, which examines the scientific, political, economic, and cultural meaning of precision measurement in Germany from 1780 to 1870. With Frederic L. Holmes she is preparing a monograph on Her- mann von Helmholtz's early scientific career, from which their essay in this volume is drawn. Arleen Tuchman is Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt Uni- versity, where she teaches the history of science and medicine. She has published several articles on the rise of scientific medicine in nine- teenth-century Germany, as well as a book entitled Science, Medicine, and the State in Germany: The Case of Baden, 1815-1871 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Her current project is tentatively entitled Gender and Scientific Medicine at a Crossroad: The Life and Times of Marie Zakrzewska, 1829-1902, a biographical study of a German midwife who became one of the most prominent female physicians in nineteenth-century America. R. Steven Turner teaches the history of science and technology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, N.B., Canada. He has published widely on the development of the German university system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the history of sen- sory physiology and psychology in the nineteenth century; and the career and work of Hermann von Helmholtz. Stephan Vogel is a research fellow in the Department of Linguistic Information Processing at the University of Cologne, in the Federal Republic of Germany. He is currently completing his Ph.D. degree in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University with a thesis on the history of nineteenth-century acoustics.