Fl. Cajori. History of Physics in its elementary Branches including the Evolution of Physical Laboratories. Revised and enlarged Edition. New York, 1929.

F. Cajori. History of Physics.

Cajori’s book gives a systematic account of the elements of the history of physics. The contents of the book are: The era of the Babylonians and Egyptians. The physics of the Greeks. The Romans. The Arabs. Medieval Europe (pp. 1–57). In the next two chapters, “The 17th Century” (pp. 57–105) and “The 18th Century” (pp. 105–141), the history of the development of physical ideas and of the accumulation of the principal experimental facts in the fields of mechanics, light, heat, electricity, and sound during the 17th and 18th centuries is set forth. This part of the book is introductory in character and contains material already worked out in sufficient detail in the books of Lyubimov, Poggendorff, Heller, Ueberweg, and others.

The main content of the book is devoted to the history of physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (nineteenth century—pp. 142–289; twentieth century—pp. 290–386). Here the principal factual material concerning the development of all branches of classical physics is presented, and the emergence and development of the chief branches of the new physics, formed over the course of recent decades, are indicated in detail: radioactivity, thermal radiation, quantum theory, precision spectroscopy, electronics, atomic mechanics, and the theory of relativity. Here, too, we find a complete reflection of the evolution of physical ideas and concepts connected with the most recent development of physics: isotopes, the magneton, wave mechanics. At the end of the book there is a small supplementary chapter, “The Development of Physical Laboratories” (pp. 387–406), which gives a brief and incomplete outline of the development of teaching laboratories and especially of the principal research laboratories of the United States and Western Europe.

The paucity of literature on the history of physics makes Cajori’s book valuable for a wide circle of persons studying or teaching physics. The book would have been more valuable if it had contained portraits of physicists and more illustrations. The author has paid little attention to the works of Russian physicists, and in the book we do not encounter the names of Lomonosov, Stoletov, Avenarius, and others.

It must be acknowledged that the plan of the book is successful: in it, the later periods are outlined in greater detail than the more remote ones. Thanks to this, the history of physics in the nineteenth century is closely connected with the contemporary development of physics, with its tasks, difficulties, and quests. Therefore, when reading the book, one does not feel that detachment from modern physics from which such books often suffer. Cajori’s book contains many bibliographical references and a list of sources.

The number of books on the history of physics is very small; in particular, the history of the most recent period of physics—the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—is poor in works. Therefore Cajori’s book, despite the conspectus-like character and elementary nature of its exposition, will be received with interest by readers wishing to become acquainted with the historical outline of the development of classical and modern physics.

I. Lapinsky