Prof. Dr. Klaus Hentschel

A translator and her science consultant, who have worked together on many books, consider the problems of translating primary and secondary texts in science. Various problems encountered in translating an ongoing documentary edition in the history of science are discussed using the collected works of Albert Einstein as a test case. For instance, each language has its own preferred sentence structure; moreover, not every historical term finds a perfect equivalent in modern usage, and historical accuracy is contextually bounded.

The main features of a new online database of scientific illustrators are portrayed. We list illustrators of scientific publications of all genres (especially atlases, articles, textbooks) who were active between 1450 and 1950, thus excluding illuminators of medieval manuscripts as well as illustrators still active. Currently (Sept. 26, 2012), we already have more than 3,461 entries, with particular emphasis on anatomy, dermatology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy, and general natural history. Access to the database with its 20 search fields is free and open to all interested users at www.uni-stu ttgart.de/hi/gnt/dsi/

This book focuses on the gradual formation of the concept of ‘light quanta’ or ‘photons’, as they have usually been called in English since 1926. The great number of synonyms that have been used by physicists to denote this concept indicates that there are many different mental models of what ‘light quanta’ are: simply finite, ‘quantized packages of energy’ or ‘bullets of light’? ‘Atoms of light’ or ‘molecules of light’? ‘Light corpuscles’ or ‘quantized waves’? Singularities of the field or spatially extended structures able to interfere? ‘Photons’ in G.N. Lewis’s sense, or as defined by QED, i.e. virtual exchange particles transmitting the electromagnetic force? The term ‘light quantum’ made its first appearance in Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on a “heuristic point of view” to cope with the photoelectric effect and other forms of interaction of light and matter, but the mental model associated with it has a rich history both before and after 1905. Some of its semantic layers go as far back as Newton and Kepler, some are only fully expressed several decades later, while others initially increased in importance then diminished and finally vanished. In conjunction with these various terms, several mental models of light quanta were developed—six of them are explored more closely in this book. It discusses two historiographic approaches to the problem of concept formation: the author’s own model of conceptual development as a series of semantic accretions and Mark Turner’s model of ‘conceptual blending’. Both of these models are shown to be useful and should be explored further. This is the first historiographically sophisticated history of the fully fledged concept and all of its twelve semantic layers. It systematically combines the history of science with the history of terms and a philosophically inspired history of ideas in conjunction with insights from cognitive science.

The manipulation of materials, and to some extent also their systematic classification, form an integral part of the skills and culture of all societies. Yet it took long for proper sciences to develop out of many processing procedures, tapping the accumulated knowledge about specific material characteristics. In the late 20th century an overarching science of workable materials emerged: materials science. This concept and term originated from major boosts in materials research during WWII and the Cold War, first financed by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Advanced Research Project Agency. The COSMAT-Report from 1974, written by the American Presidential Science Advisory Committee’s „Committee on the Survey of Materials Science and Engineering" four years after its inception, and subsequent reports heralded in the second institutionalization phase of materials science in the USA and with some delay also elsewhere. As the field continued to expand, the demand grew from within in the late 1990s for disciplinary status. This article sorts these claims from the various camps and sets them in the context of unfolding institutional change. The developments within the German-speaking realm, thus far unduly neglected in these debates, are added. I close with a systematic discussion of eight indicator arguments for or against a convergence of this complex field of research into a single coherent discipline. Against Bensaude-Vincent’s thesis that materials science still is an “aggregation of fragments of knowledge", I argue that by 2010 materials science did indeed achieve disciplinary status in a historically rare and enduring process of discipline formation through “emergence by integration" rather than by differentiation.

This paper describes a now widely forgotten tradition in the nineteenth century which - to borrow a simile used or implied by the actors themselves - may be described as 'spectroscopic portraiture'. Quite unlike the later obsession with numerical precision in wavelength measurement, and also in stark contrast to the contemporary vogue of photographic mapping which presumptuously claimed 'mechanical objectivity', that is avoidance of any human intervention in the recorded data, there was among some spectroscopists a much greater preoccupation with qualitative rather than quantitative aspects. The atlases of the solar spectrum by Cornu, Thollon, and Piazzi Smyth were supposed to convey the subjectively perceived Gestalt of the Fraunhofer lines, at the expense of precision. I shall argue that this was a systematic research programme addressed to a welldefined but small audience of specialists in the new subdiscipline of spectroscopy which was distinct from other practices such as spectrum analysis, which was directed mainly at chemists. Apart from this, the new tradition can also be identified by the dense net of cross-references in the publications of the various members, and by their critique of earlier work. This tradition of spectrum portraiture started with Kirchhoff's 1861-2 high-resolution chromolithographic plates of the solar spectrum, which were printed off a half-dozen different stones in order to render most faithfully the various line intensities. Focusing especially on the tension between representational goals and technical possibilities in the rapidly developing printing industry, I then trace the emerging tradition through its apogee to the close of the nineteenth century

The Gradual Formation of the Concept of ‘Light Quanta’. The complex concept of ‘light quanta’ which made its first appearance in Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on a “heuristic point of view” to cope with the photoelectric effect and other forms of interaction of light and matter, has a rich history both before and after 1905. Some of its semantic layers lead as far back as Newton and Kepler, others are only fully espoused several decades later, yet others initially increased, then diminished in importance and finally vanished. Two historiographic approaches are discussed and exemplified: a) my own model of conceptual development as a series of semantic accretions, and b) Mark Turner’s model of ‘conceptual blending’. Both of these models are shown to be useful and will be further explored in my own efforts to come to grips with the complex process of concept formation.

Summary The growing need for standardized units of measure led to major metrological reforms in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper focusses on their implementation in the Kingdom of Hanover and the involvement of C.F. Gauss. His papers reveal how much the success of his precision measurements hinged on the skill of his mechanic M. Meyerstein. A discussion of the regional weights and measures and the standardization procedure is followed by a description of various precision balances and the weighing methods employed as well as a review of the problems posed by reliable length calibration. The success of the enterprise rested not only on intellectual prestige and ministerial clout but also on the hands-on skill of the mechanical practitioner.

Die Relativitatstheorien (RT) Einsteins gehoren zu den meistdiskutierten Theorien der Physik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nach der Formulie­ rung der sog. 'speziellen Relativitatstheorie' (SRT) im Jahr 1905 nah­ men zunachst nur einige Spezialisten von ihr Kenntnis, bis mit ungefiihr fiinf Jahren Verspatung dann auch zunehmend Nicht-Physiker sich mit ihr zu beschaftigen begannen, angeregt durch populiirwissenschaftliche, all­ gemeinverstiindliche 'Einfiihrungen' von Kollegen Einsteins wie z. B. Paul Langevin in Frankreich oder Max von Laue in Deutschland. Diese Pha­ senverschiebung zwischen fachwissenschaftlichem Ausbau der Theorie und offentlicher Notiznahme wiederholte sich bei Einsteins 'allgemeiner Theorie der Relativitat und Gravitation' (ART). Zwischen 1913 und 1915 in ihren wesentlichen Ziigen ausformuliert, wurde sie erst nach einer spektakuliiren experimentellen Bestatigung im Jahr 1919 einem breiterem Publikum be­ kannt. In meiner Arbeit werde ich den Facettenreichtum der Ausdeutungen, die beide RT erfuhren, zunachst zu referieren und durch repriisentative Zi­ tate aus der Literatur der Zeit zu belegen haben. Der Umfang dieser Arbeit geht wesentlich auf das Konto dieser ausgewahlten Belege - davon verspre­ che ich mir, dafi nicht nur bislang unveroffentlichte Dokumente, sondern auch entlegene Texte hier in ihren zentralen Passagen leicht zuganglich ge­ macht werden. Fernerhin werde ich aber auch zu analysieren haben, warum derartig vielfaltige, einander mitunter diametral entgegengesetzte Interpre­ tationen einer wissenschaftlichen Theorie vorgelegt wurden.