From Classical to Quantum Physics

Suitable for lay readers as well as students, this absorbing survey explores the twentieth-century transition from classical to quantum physics. Author Philip Stehle traces the shift in the scientific worldview from the work of Galileo, Newton, and Darwin to the modern-day achievements of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, and others of their generation. His insightful overview examines not only the history of quantum physics but also the ways that progress in the discipline changed our understanding of the physical world and forces of nature.
This chronicle of the second revolution in the physical sciences conveys the excitement and suspense that new developments produced in the scientific community. The narrative ranges from the classical physics of the seventeenth-century to the emergence of quantum mechanics with the entrance of the electron, the rise of relativity theory, the development of atomic theory, and the recognition of wave-particle duality. Relevant mathematical details appear in separate boxed sections that can be studied or skipped, making the book accessible to general readers as well as historians of science and students of physics.
Dover republication of Order, Chaos, Order: The Transition from Classical to Quantum Physics, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994.