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13574 results in History of science and technology

Page 566 of 679

  • BJH volume 6 issue 1 Cover and Back matter

  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 6 / Issue 1 / June 1972
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. b1-b5
    Print publication:
    June 1972
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  • Science and Scottish University Reform: Edinburgh in 1826

  • J. B. Morrell
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 6 / Issue 1 / June 1972
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. 39-56
    Print publication:
    June 1972

  • In the late eighteenth century, which was for Scotland in many ways an ‘Age of Improvement’, the University of Edinburgh enjoyed a golden age. Under the enlightened principalship of the Reverend William Robertson, the University offered wide, flexible, and mainly secular courses of study which were taught by conspicuously able professors. If we restrict ourselves to scientific chairs, a roll-call of their occupants is distinctly impressive: John Robison (natural philosophy, 1774–1805); John Playfair (mathematics, 1785–1805); John Walker (natural history, 1779–1804); Daniel Rutherford (botany, 1786–1819); James Gregory (theory of medicine, 1776–89); William Cullen (practice of medicine, 1773–90); Alexander Monro secundus (anatomy, 1758–98); and their doyen Joseph Black (chemistry and medicine, 1766–99), ‘so pale, so gentle, so elegant, and so illustrious’. The scientific eminence of the University at that time is, of course, widely acknowledged.

  • George Gabriel Stokes on Stellar Aberration and the Luminiferous Ether*

  • David B. Wilson
  • Journal:
    The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 6 / Issue 1 / June 1972
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 January 2009, pp. 57-72
    Print publication:
    June 1972

  • Acceptance of Augustin Fresnel's wave theory of light posed numerous questions for early nineteenth-century physicists. Among the most pressing was the problem of the properties of the luminiferous ether. Fresnel had shown that light waves were transverse. Therefore, since, among ordinary materials, only solids support transverse vibrations, there existed striking likenesses between highly tangible solids and the highly intangible ether. Accordingly, such men as Augustin-Louis Cauchy, James MacCullagh, Franz Neumann, and George Green constructed various theories of an elastic-solid ether.1 At the same time, however, the disconcerting implausibilities of an all-pervasive solid provoked considerable apprehension in regard to the elastic-solid tradition. Thomas Young found the concept ‘perfectly appalling’ and argued that ‘the hypothesis [that fluids can support transverse vibrations] remains completely open for discussion, notwithstanding the apparent difficulties attending it.’2 John Herschel, probably the most important English advocate of the wave theory, regarded the concept of a solid ether as only a temporary device, useful ‘till the real truth shall be discovered.’3 Consequently, despite the accomplishments which helped to make the elastic-solid theory ‘the most celebrated special form of the wave theory’,4 there were important voices of reservation.

Page 566 of 679