Gerald Holton

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Gerald James Holton (born May 23, 1922 in Berlin ) is an American science historian of German-Austrian descent.

Holton grew up in Vienna and emigrated to the USA in 1938. He studied physics at the City of Oxford School of Technology, Wesleyan University and Harvard University , where he received his PhD in 1948 under Percy Williams Bridgman . He is Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.

His research areas are high pressure physics and the history of science, especially the history of relativity and Albert Einstein . He was on the editorial committee of Einstein's Collected Works at Princeton University Press.

Holton is a member of the American Physical Society , the American Philosophical Society , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1956) and a Life Honorary Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences . In 1960 he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He was President of the History of Science Society and Vice President of the International History of Science Society. Holton was also on the United States' UNESCO Commission. He was a co-founder and editor of Daedalus magazine and Science, Society and Human Values .

Holton has received the George Sarton Medal and the Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize , both awarded by the History of Science Society, the Andrew Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, and the Abraham Pais Prize from the American Physical Society, and with awarded the Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers . He also received the John Desmond Bernal Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science . He was a Herbert Spencer Lecturer at Oxford University . Since 1987 he has been a member of the Leopoldina Academic Academy . In 2016 he was elected honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences .

Works

  • Introduction to concepts and theories in physical science . Addison-Wesley Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1952, 2nd edition with Stephen Brush 1973, 3rd edition as “Physics - the human adventure. From Copernicus to Einstein and beyond ", Rutgers University Press 2001
  • with Duane HD Roller: Foundations of modern physical science . Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1958.
  • Thematic analysis of science. The physics of Einstein and his time . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-07893-3 (English original: Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein , Harvard University Press 1973, 1988, collection of articles).
  • Einstein, history, and other passions: the rebellion against science at the end of the 20th century . Americ. Inst. Of Physics Press, Woodbury, NY 1995, Addison-Wesley 1996 (German [Translator: Rainer Sengerling]: Einstein, the story and other passions . Braunschweig, Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1998. ISBN 3-528-06906-6 . )
  • Science and anti-science , Harvard University Press 1993 (German: Science and anti-science . Springer, Berlin, Vienna [et al.] 2000).
  • The Scientific Imagination - case studies , Cambridge University Press 1978, Harvard University Press 1998
  • Victory and Vexation in Science: Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Others , Harvard University Press 2005
  • with Gerhard Sonnert: Gender differences in Scientific Careers , Rutgers University Press 1995
  • with Sonnert: Who succeeds in science? The gender dimension , Rutgers University Press 1995
  • with Sonnert: What happened to the children who fled Nazi persecution? Macmillan 2006
  • with James Rutherford, David C. Cassidy : Understanding physics , Springer 2002
  • Advancement of science, and its burdens , Harvard University Press 1998
  • Publisher: Science and the modern mind - a symposium , Boston, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1958

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas W. Daum: Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians. Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities . In: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan (Eds.): The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians . Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 1-52 .
  2. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Gerald Holton (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on July 15, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Holton, Gerald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Holton, Gerald James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin