38
votes
Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
George Green may be considered a physicist or a mathematician. (The titles of his papers suggest a physicist). He was a son of a miller, and a miller himself,
in Nottingham, self educated. At the age ...
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33
votes
Historical example of research papers being misinterpreted due to poor wording and creating controversy?
Giovanni Schiaparelli ...
He wrote in 1877 about his telescopic observations of Mars. He described some features using the Italian word canali. English translation would be channels. But the term ...
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30
votes
What are the earliest inventions to store and release energy (e.g. fly wheels)?
One early invention for storing energy was a basin above the level of the river.
It was filled with water when the water in the river was high, and then, when the water in the river was low, it was ...
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29
votes
Accepted
How was Einstein led to make a contact with Differential Geometry for his theory of General Relativity?
Einstein himself told the story in his Kyoto address of 1922, which I quote from Pais's biography titled Subtle is the Lord:
"If all systems are equivalent, then Euclidean geometry cannot hold in ...
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29
votes
What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
One famous example is that of Alexander Fleming. He left a cup of staphylococci on his desk and later discovered that it was contaminated with some fungus. Instead of disposing this cup, he started to ...
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29
votes
Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
Michael Faraday would meet your criteria as a physicist of historic significance without a formal education. Notably, he spent most of his teenage years working as an apprentice bookbinder. Somewhat ...
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28
votes
What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
In 1961, Edward Lorenz was running a numerical simulation of weather systems. To restart a run half-way, he copied the initial values from a previous printout — but saw that the simulation began to ...
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28
votes
Who was the first to hypothesise that gravity from one mass causes the spacetime around another mass to curve?
The first metric theory of gravitation, in which the effects of gravitation are treated entirely in terms of the geometry of curved spacetime, was published by Finnish physicist Gunnar Nordström in ...
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24
votes
I want to know the tricks to search for and find old academic journals for free
For Google Books you will often want to use date-restricted searches (for some reason these don't work so well after the early 1900s, at least for me), but don't restrict to a single publication year ...
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23
votes
Who discovered the covering homomorphism between SU(2) and SO(3)?
Hamilton and Klein, Klein was more explicit about it. Hamilton in Lectures on Quaternions (1853) realized that his representation of rotations of rigid bodies by the unit quaternions was not $1$-$1$, ...
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23
votes
Accepted
Who is the lady on the image?
This is a stylized picture of a generic pretty lady of the mid 1700's,
created in the mid 1800's to illustrate a sentimental poem in a book collection of such for the amusement of genteel young ...
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22
votes
What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
It was well known that when you iterate $x\mapsto \lambda x(1-x)$, the following happens: when $\lambda$ is small, $x=0$ is an attracting fixed point; as $\lambda$ grows, at some moment $\lambda_1$ ...
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21
votes
What are the earliest inventions to store and release energy (e.g. fly wheels)?
This is probably not what you were thinking of but "the earliest invention that allowed energy to be stored and released after a delay even it's just a short time" was a stone.
I can store ...
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21
votes
Did Newton know about non-inertial frames?
TL;DR Yes, but...
1) Inertial frames
To say that Newton had the modern conception of even inertial frames (based on the laws of motion), is an overstatement. Theoretically, he did not need them ...
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19
votes
Is this Einstein rejection letter fake?
According to this, it's a modern fabrication:
Although Einstein’s initial application for a doctorate at the University of Bern (he had previously been awarded a PhD by the University of Zürich in ...
- 5,441
19
votes
Why do many names of technical and scientific subjects end with "ics"?
It is not random. These names are of Greek origin, and -ic or -ics are Anglicizations of the Greek suffix -ikos, which meant "pertaining to". In other languages it can be rendered as -ika or -ica, ...
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19
votes
Accepted
Why did Galileo express himself in terms of ratios when describing laws of accelerated motion?
Galileo followed a venerable tradition of distinguishing numbers, magnitudes of different kinds (lengths, times, areas, etc.) and ratios. This is somewhat analogous to the strictures of modern ...
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19
votes
Accepted
Did most or just few physicists think in 1900 that there was nothing important left to discover?
Even Kelvin, who is commonly "credited" with this idea, did not think so, see Passon, Kelvin's clouds and Yanes, Lord Kelvin and the End of Physics, Which He Never Predicted.
Kelvin's 1900 ...
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18
votes
Accepted
Did Richard Feynman ever meet Stephen Hawking or comment on Hawking radiation?
I take that your primary goal is to know what Feynman thought of Hawking's work. While it is possible that they have met I would consider it unlikely given that Feynman mentioned several times how his ...
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18
votes
Accepted
What is the origin of the $\hbar$ symbol?
$
{\def\Target#1{\rlap{\smash{\label{#1}\phantom{\tag{#1}}}}}}
{\def\BackUp{\raise{0.25em}{\Tiny{\boxed{\boldsymbol{\Uparrow} \hspace{-2px}}}}}}
$tl;dr– It's unclear. The symbol $`` \hbar "$ itself ...
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18
votes
Who discovered the covering homomorphism between SU(2) and SO(3)?
Before Hamilton (1847) one should cite Euler (1771), Gauss (1819), Rodrigues (1840), and Cayley (1845). Detailed references in e.g.
Pujol, J., Hamilton, Rodrigues, Gauss, quaternions, and rotations: ...
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18
votes
Which physicists died very young or in a tragic way?
Henry Moseley was KIA at Gallipoli at the age of 27
Rene Gateaux was KIA in the Battle of Grand Couronné at the age of 25. (France lost many young mathematicians in WWI. The list can be continued).
...
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18
votes
I want to know the tricks to search for and find old academic journals for free
A famous pirate site with a long legal history is Library Genesis (on Wikipedia you can read about its ups and downs). A trick that someone (not me, of course) might have used is to retrieve the ...
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17
votes
Accepted
What did Schroedinger try to say with the cat thought experiment?
One can simply read what Schroedinger said, English translation of his paper The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935) by Trimmer is available on Jstor. The cat paradox is presented as part of ...
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16
votes
Accepted
How did the publication feat of Einstein's four 1905 Annus Mirabilis papers get through peer review?
I am afraid, you are overprojecting the power and the glory of peer review. Although some instances can be cited as early as 17th century, it only became what it is today with the triumph of publish ...
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16
votes
Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is often credited with the idea of communication satellites. link That was in 1945, long before any artificial satellite had been launched in reality.
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16
votes
Accepted
What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
Teflon (Polytetrafluoroethylene) was discovered by Roy Plunkett while working on new refrigerant. There was a residue at the bottom of the bottle he was using, a bottle which should have been emptied ...
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16
votes
Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
Other possibilities might be James Joule and Oliver Heaviside.
Joule was a brewer by trade and worked on science entirely as an amateur (as far as I know). He was one of the few examples of a ...
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