Research Catalog

Title

Springs of scientific creativity : essays on founders of modern science / Rutherford Aris, H. Ted Davis, Roger H. Stuewer, editors.

Publication

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c1983.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Stuewer, Roger H.
• Aris, Rutherford
• Davis, H. Ted (Howard Ted)

Description

viii, 342 p. : ill., ports.; 24 cm.

Summary

Mathematician Henri Poincaré was boarding a bus when he realized that the transformations of non-Euclidean geometry were just those he needed in his research on the theory of functions. He did not have to interrupt his conversation, still less to verify the equation in detail; his insight was complete at that point. Poincaré's insight into his own creativity -- his awareness that preliminary cogitation and the working of the subconscious had prepared his mind for an intuitive flash of recognition -- is just one of many possible analyses of scientific creativity, a subject as fascinating as it is elusive. The authors of this book have chosen to search for the springs of scientific creativity by examining the lives and work of a dozen innovative thinkers in the fields of mathematics, physics, and chemistry from the seventeenth down to the mid-twentieth century.

Subject

• Physics > history
• Physicists
• Scientists
• Physics > History
• Creative ability in science

Genre/Form

• Essay
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Galileo and early experimentation / Thomas B. Settle -- Newton's development of the Principia / Richard S. Westfall -- The origins and consequences of certain of J.P. Johle's scientific ideas / Donald S.L. Cardwell -- Maxwell's scientific creativity / C.W.F. Everitt -- The scientific style of Josiah Willard Gibbs / Martin J. Klein -- Principle scientific contributions of John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh / John N. Howard -- Elmer Sperry and Adrian Leverkühn: a comparison of creative styles / Thomas P. Hughes -- Walther Nernst and the application of physics to chemistry / Erwin N. Hiebert -- Albert Einstein and the creative act: the case of special relativity / Stanley Goldberg -- Erwin Schrödinger and the descriptive tradition / Linda Wessels -- Michael Polanyi's creativity in chemistry / William T. Scott -- The role of John von Neumann in the computer field / Herman H. Goldstine.

ISBN

0816610878 :

LCCN

^^^82023715^//r83

OCLC

• 9082391
• SCSB-11164373

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library