HSTCMP 313/ASTR 313: Physics and Astrophysics Since 1800
This course is an introduction to the history of physics, and intended for students with or without backgrounds in history of science or in physics and astronomy. It begins with the first reactions to Newtonian orthodoxy in the early nineteenth century and emphasizes the different forms of practices and ideas in physics and astronomy in different European cultures, as well as the US. The second half of the course deals with new regimes of theory and experiment and changes in cosmology and stellar physics during the twentieth century, leading up to the first standard models in the 1960s.
The main emphasis is to consider major problems in the history of these sciences, how historians have dealt with them, and how scholarship in this field has changed since the 1970s.
This is a W optional course.