History of Physics

This is a new publication of Max von Laue's famous book "History of Physics" (typeset in LaTeX).

This is a valuable book not only because of its very informative content but particularly because it was written by a Nobel Laureate for Physics (1914). Although it covers the history of physics up to 1940, this does not make it outdated because no period of history, especially of the history of physics, can be outdated and because 1940 ("taken as the terminal date" as von Laue put it) is well after the completion of the two greatest revolutions not only in physics but in all the science - the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

What makes this book even more valuable is von Laue's brilliant style of writing. Here are two examples to demonstrate that reading this book will undoubtedly be both helpful and enjoyable:

"Certainly, nothing in its previous history had contributed so powerfully to the establishment of respect for the young science of physics as did the Newtonian computation of the orbits of the planets. From then on, this science has been a great mental empire, which no other power may ignore with impunity."

"The question is often raised as to the objectivity, the truth of scientific knowledge... Yet, it [physics] itself furnishes proof of its objective truth, proof that has overwhelming power of conviction... Whoever has been privileged to live through such an extremely surprising event, even at a considerable distance, or, at least, to survey it after it has occurred, can no longer retain any doubt that the confluent theories certainly contain, if not complete truth, a substantial core of objective truth that is devoid of human embellishment."