Through Measurement to Knowledge
1990; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/978-94-009-2079-8
ISSN2214-7942
Autores ResumoTile; D'apC:Tile; l.DpWTa ()coi 7rpo7rapod)w £ D 'T}K,mi'."between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows".This quote from Isiodos, the first lyrical poet, is jotted on a sheet of paper found among the papers of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at the Boerhaave Museum, Leiden.On this same sheet, one can also read quotes from Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, Homer, Pindar and Dante.Each quote is for somebody or something.It appears to have been a game played at least by Ehrenfest and Crommelin -an unmistakable sign of these two physicists's deep culture.This particular quote was for the "Werkplaats", the Physical Laboratory of the University of Leiden.Our purpose in putting together the Selected Papers of its first Director, Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926), is to try and articulate the dominant trends of a different type of culture at Leiden: its physics culture during the years that established low temperature physics as a distinct branch of physics.Our aims in choosing the particular papers are threefold.First, we wish to present the interconnectedness among the different research programs of Kamerlingh Onnes and to bring out the decisive role of the work initiated by van der Waals in determining the direction of nearly all of these research programs.Second, we want to argue that Kamerlingh Onnes' s work, to the extent that it contributed so dramatically to the establishment of a new area, that of cryophysics, presents an instructive case for examining a rather neglected aspect in the study of the emergence of new subject areas.The methodological trends that appear to be particular to this specific branch of physics as it has been established and developed at Leiden.It is our claim that the gradual appearance of a new branch within a particular scientific discipline (in our case, low temperature physics within physics) is accompanied by a series of methodological novelties particular to the specific branch that delineate its autonomous status.Third, a detailed investigation of the work at Leiden during this particular period may be suggestive of possible differences with respect to the trends followed in other laboratories, and these differences may be indicative of differences in styles of researchand even of national styles.In the introductory text we have a few biographical details of Kamerlingh Onnes and before proceeding to a detailed analysis of the three main research programs (in thermodynamics and the equation of state, in electricity and in ix x PREFACE magnetism), we discuss the early work of Diderik van der Waals (especially his equation of state and the law of corresponding states), its relation to the findings of Thomas Andrews and Maxwell's reactions to it.There is also a section about the liquefaction of helium and the properties of liquid helium, where we include some new material that throw some light on the difficulties encountered by Kamerlingh Onnes few months before the liquefaction of helium.The chapter written by Rudolf de Bruyn Ouboter deals with the developments in instrumentation before the liquefaction of helium, and describes the apparatus used for this purpose.The papers are divided in five categories.In the first are those intended for a more general audience, and our notes are much more detailed than for the other papers.The titles of the papers in the other four sections are self-explanatory, and in addition to our overall aims, we try to emphasize the most significant contributions of Kamerlingh Onnes.The introductory text does not attempt to be a substitute for a biography of Kamerlingh Onnes.Nor do we deal with the exceedingly significant relationship of the developments in low temperature physics with technological developments.It would, indeed, be an interesting undertaking to write the history of refrigeration.It is, rather, an attempt to raise a series of methodological and historical issues concerning the establishment of low temperature physics as a "separate" branch and its development that was so heavily influenced by Leiden's physics culture.
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