This book is indexed in Chemical Abstracts ServiceThis book offers a comprehensive sketch of the tools used in material research and the rich and diverse stories of how those tools came to be. We aim to give readers a sense of what tools materials researchers required in the late 20th century, and how those tools were developed and became accessible. The book is in a sense a collective biography of the components of what the philosopher of science, Ian Hacking, calls the 'instrumentarium' of materials research. Readers should gain an appreciation of the work materials researchers put into developing and using such tools, and of the tremendous variety of such tools. They should also gain some insight into the material (and hence financial) prerequisites for materials research. Materials research requires funding for the availability and maintenance of its tools; and the category of tools encompasses a broad range of substances, apparatus, institutions, and infrastructure.Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials (Part of A World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and History of Materials Science)

The 476 letters in the thirteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall document the period from June 1, 1872, to September 28, 1873, much of which was consumed by Tyndall’s lecture tour of the United States. We meet him in the midst of the Ayrton affair, which saw Tyndall coming to the defense of his friend and fellow X Club member Joseph Dalton Hooker against the First Commissioner of Works, Acton Smee Ayrton, in an acrimonious dispute over the governance of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Tyndall’s tour of the United States was a rousing success by many measures, but he was not long on American shores before his well-documented skepticism of the efficacy of prayer stoked the waspish ire of the faithful. Tyndall’s return to England in mid-February 1873 saw him begin preparations for his 1874 Belfast Address, when he accepted the presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and articulated a defense of materialism that scandalized many of his contemporaries. As we leave him in September 1873, Tyndall is engaged in sharp-elbowed jostling with Scottish physicist Peter Guthrie Tait in the pages of Nature over James David Forbes, whose theory of glacial motion Tait had defended against Tyndall’s attacks, in a scientific disagreement that evolved into a personal one. Amid the tumult of controversy, though, these letters reveal a man of science riding high on widespread esteem, wielding the influence it brought him with gusto, and moving with ease through the rarefied social and intellectual circles into which he had climbed.

Solid state physics, the study of the physical properties of solid matter, was the most populous subfield of Cold War American physics. Despite prolific contributions to consumer and medical technology, such as the transistor and magnetic resonance imaging, it garnered less professional prestige and public attention than nuclear and particle physics. Solid State Insurrection argues that solid state physics was essential to securing the vast social, political, and financial capital Cold War physics enjoyed in the twentieth century. Solid state's technological bent, and its challenge to the "pure science" ideal many physicists cherished, helped physics as a whole respond more readily to Cold War social, political, and economic pressures. Its research kept physics economically and technologically relevant, sustaining its cultural standing and policy influence long after the sheen of the Manhattan Project had faded. With this book, Joseph D. Martin brings a new perspective to some of the most enduring questions about the role of physics in American history.