Calculate but Don't Shut Up | AEON
“If you want to figure out how an electron will behave as it moves in time through space, then you need to reach for quantum mechanics.
But there’s a problem.”
The Long Road to Maxwell's Equations - IEEE Spectrum
“The mathematical and conceptual underpinnings of Maxwell’s theory were so complicated and counterintuitive that his theory was largely neglected after it was first introduced.
It took nearly 25 years for a small group of physicists, themselves obsessed with the mysteries of electricity and magnetism, to put Maxwell’s theory on solid footing.”
Physics Loses a Giant | Science News
“But Weinberg understood the viewpoint of the historians perfectly well. He just didn’t like it. For Weinberg, the story of science that was meaningful to people today was how the early stumblings toward understanding nature evolved into a surefire system for finding correct explanations.”
The End Of Time | Nautilus Magazine
“This April, as he sat in the kitchen of his 360-year-old house in Oxfordshire, England, Barbour, 84, was still discussing the concept of time with the excitement of a 26-year-old. In December, 2020, he published The Janus Point, his first book since The End of Time. It’s named after the two-headed Roman god who simultaneously looks forward and backward.”
Ernest Rutherford's Ambitions | Physics Today
“In the early 20th century, the most important physics laboratories in the world were concentrated in Europe; by comparison, North American institutions were scrappy upstarts at best and irrelevant backwaters at worst. Rutherford felt isolated and frustrated by his distance from the centers of the physics world.”