Ebook: Research and Pedagogy: A History of Quantum Physics through Its Textbooks

Edition Open Access, 2013. - 296 pp.
Historians of quantum physics and early quantum mechanics have seldom paid attention to the ways the new theory was integrated in physics textbooks, perhaps taking for granted that novelties in science can only be taught once they are fully understood and generally accepted. The essays in this volume challenge this view by studying some of the early books and textbooks in which quantum theory was first introduced. By so doing, the authors show the many ways books and textbooks embody pedagogical and research practices in certain local environments (geographical, disciplinary, in terms of expertise, etc.), as well as the circular feedback between research and pedagogy.Contents:
Pedagogy and Research. Notes for a Historical Epistemology of Science Education (by Massimiliano Badino, Jaume Navarro).
Sorting Things Out: Drude and the Foundations of Classical Optics (by Marta Jordi Taltavull).
Max Planck as Textbook Author (by Dieter Hoffmann).
Dissolving the Boundaries between Research and Pedagogy: Otto Sackur’s Lehrbuch der Thermochemie und Thermodynamik (by Massimiliano Badino).
Fritz Reiche’s 1921 Quantum Theory Textbook (by Clayton A. Gearhart).
Sommerfeld’s Atombau und Spektrallinien (by Michael Eckert).
Kuhn Losses Regained: Van Vleck from Spectra to Susceptibilities (by Charles Midwinter, Michel Janssen).
Max Born’s Vorlesungen über Atommechanik, Erster Band (by Domenico Giulini).
Teaching Quantum Physics in Cambridge: George Birtwistle and His Two Textbooks (by Jaume Navarro).
Paul Dirac and The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (by Helge Kragh).
Quantum Mechanics in Context: Pascual Jordan's 1936 Anschauliche Quantentheorie (by Don Howard).
Epilogue: Textbooks and the Emergence of a Conceptual Trajectory (by David Kaiser).