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"Pickover contemplates realms beyond our known reality."
-- The New York Times

"Pickover inspires a new generation of da Vincis to build unknown flying machines and create new Mona Lisas."
-- Christian Science Monitor

"The polymathic Clifford Pickover discusses 'landmark laws of nature that were discovered over several centuries and whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and understanding.'" - Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer

Radio interview on the book on biggest night-time radio show in the U.S.

Archimedes to Hawking

Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them
22 Centuries of Discovery

Do We Discover or Invent Laws?

What is Reality Really?

When Will the Last Law be Discovered?

Clifford A. Pickover, Oxford University Press
(Buy at Amazon.Com)

Book Praise

"A ride through the history of world-changing scientific ideas. Pickover pays homage to the great minds who have laid bare the mathematical machinery whirring just beneath the skin of reality. An impressively researched tour de force."

-Marcus Chown, author of The Quantum Zoo

"Clifford Pickover has brilliantly succeeded in a monumental task. He has explained, in his usual lucid style, some forty of the greatest laws of physics, and sketched the lives and often eccentric personalities of the geniuses who discovered them. Pickover's pages reflect his vast knowledge of physics and his firm conviction that mathematics has an awesome external reality."

-Martin Gardner, author of The Colossal Book of Mathematics

"The incomparable Clifford Pickover has written another rich science narrative that at once informs and entertains. There is no one writing today with such an encyclopedic knowledge of all things scientific, and Archimedes to Hawking covers the gamut of what is arguably the most important topic in all of science—the laws of nature. Are they discovered or invented? Do they correspond to things out in the world or only to thoughts inside our heads? These and numerous other tantalizing questions are answered as Pickover takes us through a brief history of nearly everything in the universe (and the universe itself)."

-Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist Scientific American, author of Why Darwin Matters and The Mind of the Market

"Bucky Fuller thought big, Arthur C. Clarke thinks big, but Cliff Pickover outdoes them both." -- WIRED

"A perpetual idea machine, Clifford Pickover is one of the most creative, original thinkers in the world today." -- Journal of Recreational Mathematics

Archimedes to Hawking takes the reader on a journey across the centuries as it explores the eponymous physical laws--from Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion--whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and our understanding of the universe.

Throughout this fascinating book, Clifford Pickover invites us to share in the amazing adventures of brilliant, quirky, and passionate people after whom these laws are named. These lawgivers turn out to be a fascinating, diverse, and sometimes eccentric group of people. Many were extremely versatile polymaths--human dynamos with a seemingly infinite supply of curiosity and energy and who worked in many different areas in science. Others had non-conventional educations and displayed their unusual talents from an early age. Some experienced resistance to their ideas, causing significant personal anguish.

Pickover examines more than 40 great laws, providing brief and cogent introductions to the science behind the laws as well as engaging biographies of such scientists as Newton, Faraday, Ohm, Curie, and Planck. Throughout, he includes fascinating, little-known tidbits relating to the law or lawgiver, and he provides cross-references to other laws or equations mentioned in the book. For several entries, he includes simple numerical examples and solved problems so that readers can have a hands-on understanding of the application of the law.

A sweeping survey of scientific discovery as well as an intriguing portrait gallery of some of the greatest minds in history, this superb volume will engage everyone interested in science and the physical world or in the dazzling creativity of these brilliant thinkers.

Clifford A. Pickover is the author of forty books on such topics as computers and creativity, art, mathematics, black holes, human behavior and intelligence, time travel, alien life, religion, medical mysteries, and science fiction. Pickover is a prolific inventor with over forty patents, is the associate editor for several journals, and puzzle contributor to magazines geared to children and adults. He lives outside New York City.


The large mystery images directly above and below are from the book Archimedes to Hawking.
If you can guess who drew these and what they represent, contact me and I will personally congratulate you.

Albert Einstein once remarked that "the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." Indeed, we appear to live in a cosmos that can be described or approximated by compact mathematical expressions and physical laws. In this book, I discuss landmark laws of nature that were discovered over several centuries and whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and understanding of the universe…. The laws enable humanity to create and destroy - and sometimes they change the very way we look at reality itself.…

Centuries ago, most of the lawgivers saw God's hand in nature's laws…. Because the laws of nature provide a framework in which to explore the nature of reality, and because laws allow scientists to make predictions about the universe, the discoveries of the laws are among humanity's greatest noetic, or intellectual, achievements….

Just imagine the amazing adventures these passionate people had as they sought, discovered, and tested elegant formulations of phenomena at the heart of reality. In the end, these lawgivers changed the way we imagine and categorize our universe.

Table of Contents

 

"I do not agree with the view that the universe is a mystery.... I feel that this view does not do justice to the scientific revolution that was started almost four hundred years ago by Galileo and carried on by Newton.  They showed that at least some areas of the universe... are governed by precise mathematical laws.  Over the years since then, we have extended the work of Galileo and Newton.... We now have mathematical laws that govern everything we normally experience."

-- Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays

Introduction and Backdrop

 In which we discuss the definition of eponymous laws, the lives and afflictions of the lawgivers, science and religiosity, the difference between laws and theories, and the geographical and temporal distribution of the lawgivers.

 

The Laws of Nature

The Lawgivers

Is it Fair to Name a Law after a Person?

Theories and Laws

Do We Discover or Invent Laws?

Simple Mathematics and Reality

What is Reality Really?

Book Organization and Purpose

Distribution of Law Discoveries through Time

Where the Lawgivers Lived

When Will the Last Law be Discovered?

 

 

Part I: 250 B.C. – 1700

 

Archimedes' Principle of Buoyancy, c. 250 BC

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, 1609, 1618

Snell's Law of Refraction, 1621

Hooke's Law of Elasticity, 1660

Boyle's Gas Law, 1662  

Newton's Laws of Motion, Gravitation,

and Cooling, 1687 and 1701

 

Part II: 1700 – 1800

 

Bernoulli's Law of Fluid Dynamics, 1738

Lambert's Law of Emission, 1760   

Bode's Law of Planetary Distances, 1766

Coulomb's Law of Electrostatics, 1785

Charles's Gas Law, 1787

 

Part III: 1800 – 1900

 

Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, 1801

Henry's Gas Law, 1802

Gay-Lussac's Law of Combining Gas Volumes, 1808

Avogadro's Gas Law, 1811

Brewster's Law of Light Polarization, 1815

Dulong-Petit Law of Specific Heats, 1819

Biot-Savart Law of Magnetic Force, 1820

Fourier's Law of Heat Conduction, 1822

Ampere's Circuital Law of Electromagnetism, 1825

Ohm's Law of Electricity, 1827

Graham's Law of Effusion, 1829

Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis, 1831 and 1833 

Gauss's Law of Electricity and Magnetism, 1835

Poiseuille's Law of Fluid Flow, 1840

Joule's Law of Electric Heating, 1840

Kirchhoff's Circuit and Radiation Laws, 1845 and 1859

Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics, 1850

Stokes' Law of Viscosity, 1851 

Beer's Law of Absorption, 1852

Wiedemann-Franz Law of Conductivity, 1853

Fick's Law of Diffusion, 1855

Buys-Ballot's Wind and Pressure Law, 1857

Eötvös's Law of Capillarity, 1866

Kohlrausch's Laws of Conductivity, 1874, 1875

Curie's Magnetism Law and Curie-Weiss Law 1895,

 generalized in 1907

 

Part IV: 1900 and Beyond

 

Planck's Law of Radiation, 1900

Bragg's Law of Crystal Diffraction, 1913

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, 1927

Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, 1929

 

Final Comments on the Beauty of Mathematics in Physics

In which we briefly discuss the beauty of mathematics and human achievement, physics and religion, and additional important physicists and equations, including: Einstein's principle of mass-energy conservation, Maxwell's Equations, Schrödinger's Equation, De Broglie's Equation, Einstein's Field Equation for General Relativity, Dirac's Equation, the Balmer Series Equation, Planck's Equation, Yang-Mills Equation, Drake's Equation, Shannon's Equations, and the logistic mapping.

 

The Beauty of Mathematics

Great Equations of Science

Listmania and Human Achievement

"The Greatest Equations Ever"

Nicaragua Postage Stamp List

Physics and Religion

The Great Contenders

 In which we say farewell to the laws and lawgivers by cataloguing a far-ranging second set of eponymous laws.

 

1600-1700

Mersenne's Law (1626), Torricelli's Law (1643)

 

1700-1800

Maupertuis's Rule (1746), Richter's Law (1791)

 

1800-1900

Malus's Law (1809), Bell-Magendie Law (1811)  von Humboldt's Law (1817), Fresnel-Arago Laws (1819), Mitscherlich's Law (1821), Hamilton's Principle (1835),  Babinet's Principle (1838), Hess's Law (1840), Bergmann's Rule (1847), Gladstone-Dale Law (1858), Kopp's Law (1864), Matthiessen's rule (1864), Maxwell's Law (1866), Berthelot-Thomsen Principle (1867), Mendeleyev's Law (1869), Lorentz-Lorenz Law (1870), Coppet's Law (1871), Boltzmann's Distribution Law (1871), Abney's Law (1877), Allen's Rule (1877), Nernst's Law (1880), Raoult's Law (1882), van't Hoff's Law (1885), Ramsay-Young Law (1885), Cailletet and Mathias Law (1886), Dollo's Law (1890), Sutherland's Law  (1893), Lorentz's Force Law (1895)

 

1900-2000

Grüneisen's Law (1908), Sabine's Law (1910), Child's Law (1911), Geiger-Nuttall Rule (1911), Einstein-Stark Law (1912), Leavitt's Law (1912), Friedel's Law (1913), Moseley's Law (1913), Steinmetz's Law (1916), Bose-Einstein Distribution Law (1924), Franck-Condon Principle (1925), Pauli's Exclusion Principle (1925), Fermi-Dirac Distribution Law (1926), Moskowitz-Lombardi Rule (1973), Hawking's Laws (1970s)

 

References

 

"Perhaps an angel of the Lord surveyed an endless sea of chaos, then troubled it gently with his finger. In this tiny and temporary swirl of equations, our cosmos took shape." -Martin Gardner, Order and Surprise

"Once we have granted that any physical theory is essentially only a model for the world of experience, we must renounce all hope of finding anything like the correct theory... simply because the totality of experience is never accessible to us." -- Hugh Everett

Index

Abney's Law of Luminosity, 468

Absolute zero, 327, 328, 332

Absorption. See Beer's Law of Absorption; Biot's Absorption Law

Acoustics, 5, 172, 224, 227, 234, 247, 252, 289, 462, 473

Adams, John Couch, 101

Aerosols, 344, 345, 347

Airplane wings, 1, 126, 133-134, 350

Allen's Rule of Body Form, 468

Amontons's Law of Friction, 168

Ampere (unit), 152, 244, 246, 248, 253, 269, 278, 303

Ampčre, André-Marie, 6, 8, 161, 180, 215, 239-245, 275

Ampčre's Circuital Law of Electromagnetism, 223, 239-245, 275, 278, 487

Arago, François, 161, 214, 217, 218, 244, 275, 461

Archimedes 41-51, 277, 286, 295, 490, 497

Archimedes' lever formula, 497

Archimedes' Principle of Buoyancy, 41-51

Arrhenius's Law of Dissociation, 387

Astrology, 55, 57, 61, 100, 101, 109, 128

Astronomy, 5, 7, 10, 11, 15, 70, 71, 77-78, 101, 142, 290, 292, 317, 318, 391, 453, 458, 475, 480-483. See also Bode's Law of Planetary Distances; Galaxies; Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion; Hawking's Black-Hole Laws; Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion; Leavitt's Luminosity Law

Atomic bomb, 2, 262, 441

Atomic theory, 175-181, 186, 200, 245

Avogadro, Amedeo, 197-202

Avogadro's Gas Law, 85-86, 190, 197-202, 256

Avogadro's number, 197-198, 201, 213, 229, 268

 

Babinet's Principle of Diffraction, 462

Ballooning, 166-169, 225

Balmer Series Equation, 492-493

Barometer, 80, 192, 456

Beauty of mathematics, 485-486

Becquerel, Antoine, 161, 401

Beer, August, 355-358

Beer's Law of Absorption, 140, 355-358

Bell-Magendie Law of Nerve Function, 460

Bergmann's Rule of Species Size, 463

Bernoulli, Daniel, 9, 11, 125-136

Bernoulli, Johann, 115, 127, 129, 225

Bernoulli's Law of Fluid Dynamics, 1, 125-136, 491

Bernoulli-Euler Law, 133

Berthelot-Thomsen Principle of Chemical Reactions, 465

Betatron, 267

Big Bang, 84, 318, 408, 445, 449, 450, 482

Biot's Absorption Law, 226

Biot, Jean-Baptiste, 5, 9, 193, 222-228

Biot-Savart Law of Magnetic Force, 222-228, 240-241

Biot's Law of Rotary Dispersion, 226

Black holes, 68, 304, 480-483

Blackbodies, 28, 315, 318, 320, 409, 478. See also Planck's Law of Radiation

Blood flow, 298, 300, 370

Bode, Johann, 10, 144-151

Bode's Law of Planetary Distances, 19, 144-151, 287

Bohm, David, 452

Boltzmann's constant, 213, 219, 334, 336, 346, 359, 410-414, 419, 479, 492

Boltzmann's Distribution Law, 467

Boltzmann, Ludwig 9, 121, 213, 219, 324-325, 334, 336, 378, 384, 411-412, 467, 492. See also Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law

Bolyai, János, 13, 290, 292

Born, Max, 33, 438, 495

Bose-Einstein Distribution Law, 477

Bouguer, Pierre, 140, 156, 356

Bouguer-Beer Law, 140, 357

Boyle, Robert, 6, 31, 74, 76-77, 85-92, 354

Boyle's Gas Law, 19, 85-92, 465

Bragg, William Henry, 6, 11, 425-433 

Bragg, William Lawrence, 11, 206, 425-433 

Bragg's Law of Crystal Diffraction, 425-433

Brahe, Tycho, 52, 60-63, 70, 208

Brewster, David, 10, 203-211

Brewster's Law of Light Polarization, 203-211

Brownian motion, 346, 362, 472

Bunsen, Robert, 319-320, 382

Buoyancy, 41-42, 51, 86, 344-345

Buys-Ballot, Christoph, 373-378

Buys-Ballot's Wind and Pressure Law, 373-378, 445

 

Cailletet-Mathias Law of Density, 471

Calculus, 13, 44, 47, 102, 104, 106, 107, 110, 113, 115-117, 127, 240, 347, 352, 420, 437, 458

Cannizzaro, Stanislao, 198

Capillarity, 217, 289, 356, 379-384

Carnot, Sadi, 161, 325, 330-333

Cassini, Giovanni Domenico, 77

Cavendish, Henry, 99, 159, 160, 259, 381, 467, 490

Cavitation, 185

Cephid variables, 446

Ceres, 145, 290

Charles, Jacques, 19, 165-172

Charles's Gas Law, 19, 86, 165-172, 178, 192-193

Child's Law of Diode Current, 474

Christianity, 6-8, 31, 32, 48, 56, 63, 89, 90, 106, 107, 208, 224, 271, 281, 305, 306, 309, 353, 437, 464

Chrystal, George, 247

Clausius, Rudolf, 6, 323-341, 376, 418

Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics, 306, 323-341, 491

Coffee, 260

Coffin, James, 376

Cohen, Leon, 336

Colloids, 257, 258, 260, 261

Color blindness, 10, 175-177, 180-181

Condorcet, Nicolas de Caritat, 233

Conductivity. See Fourier's Law of Heat Conduction; Kohlrausch's Laws of Conductivity; Wiedemann-Franz Law of Conductivity

Copenhagen interpretation, 435

Copernicus, 28, 31, 37, 120, 142, 282, 358, 450, 491

Coppet's Law of Freezing Point Lowering, 467

Cosmological constant, 449

Coulomb (unit), 152, 269

Coulomb, Charles-Augustin, 8-9, 152-164, 169

Coulomb's Law of Electrostatics, 8, 152-164, 275, 381, 419, 487-488

Coulomb's Law of Friction, 158, 169

Creationism, 325 

Crick, Francis, 431

Crystallography, 399. See also Bragg's Law of Crystal Diffraction

Crystalloids, 260

Curie temperature, 392-396, 403

Curie, Irčne, 11, 402

Curie, Marie, 5, 11, 398-404, 490

Curie, Pierre, 5, 11, 392-408, 490

Curie's Magnetism Law and Curie-Weiss Law, 276, 392-408

 

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 457

Dalton, John, 10, 173-183, 186, 191-192, 194, 200, 259, 305

Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, 13, 86, 173-183

Damour, Thibaut, 304

Davy, Humphry, 9, 11, 12, 215, 252, 259, 270, 272, 273

De Broglie's Equation, 434, 487, 492, 497

Debye, Peter, 219

Debye's T3 Law, 219

Descartes, René, 15, 71, 100, 120, 233, 354

Diamagnetism, 276, 395, 397, 400

Diamond, 66, 67, 212, 219, 230, 231, 232, 427, 430

Dichroic, crystals, 203

Diffraction, 114, 349, 425-433, 462-463, 476

Diffusion, 1, 233, 237, 256-262, 346, 365-371, 376, 472. See also Fick's Laws of Diffusion; Graham's Law of Effusion

Dirac. See Fermi-Dirac Distribution Law

Dirac delta function, 202

Dirac, Paul, 33, 202, 284, 441, 479, 486, 490-491, 494-495

Dirac's Equation, 33, 487, 493-495

Dollo's Law of Evolution, 471

Doppler Effect, 375, 445, 475

Drake's Equation, 493

Dulong, Pierre, 10, 162, 212-221

Dulong-Petit Five-Fourths Power Law, 214

Dulong-Petit Law of Specific Heats, 212-221, 272

Dyson, Freeman, 51, 228, 238, 255, 281, 302, 495

 

E = mc2, vii, 27, 135, 212, 454, 482, 488, 491-493, 495-497

Eddington, Arthur, 328

Effusion, 256-264

Eiffel Tower scientists, 161-163

Einstein, Albert, vii, viii, 1, 2, 4, 14, 16, 17, 22, 27, 40, 55, 72, 73, 98, 100, 102, 103, 121, 142, 149, 151, 153, 163, 170, 183, 188, 212, 218-220, 263, 264, 277, 293, 302, 346, 358, 382, 415, 416, 420, 421, 438, 443, 449, 466, 472, 475, 477-478, 479, 482, 486, 488, 490, 491, 493-495, 500.  

diffusion equation, 472

Bose-Einstein distribution, 477-478, 479

Brownian motion, 346, 472

cosmological constant, 449

heat capacity 218-219

Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion,  449

photoelectric effect, 420

Planck and, 415, 416, 420

quantum and, 415, 416, 420

relativity. See Relativity

specific heat, 219

Stoke's relation, 346

Einstein's Field Equation for General Relativity, 486, 493, 495. See also Relativity.

Einstein's Principle of Mass-Energy Conservation. See E = mc2

Einstein-Stark Law of Photon Absorption, 475

Elasticity, 33, 133, 159, 179, 349. See also Hooke's Law of Elasticity

Electricity, vii, 8, 12, 24, 51, 66, 67, 172, 194, 199, 203, 206, 230, 236, 326, 332, 395, 399, 40, 422, 442, 465, 466, 469, 472-475, 477, 487, 488, 491, 497.  See also Ampčre's Circuital Law of Electromagnetism; Coulomb's Law of Electrostatics; Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis; Gauss's Laws of Electricity and Magnetism; Joule's Law of Electric Heating; Kirchhoff's Electrical Circuit and Thermal Radiation Laws; Kohlrausch's Laws of Conductivity; Nernst's Law of Electrode Potentials, Ohm's Law of Electricity; Wiedemann-Franz Law of Conductivity

Electrolysis. See Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis

Electrolytes, 194. See also Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis; Kohlrausch's Laws of Conductivity

Electrosurgery, 303-304

Emf, 266, 267, 274, 314

Entropy, 29, 323, 340. See also Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics

Eötvös, Loránd, 379-384, 495

Eötvös's Law of Capillarity, 379-384

Eponymy. See Laws, naming of

Equations of science, 487-488

Erdös, Paul 289

Euclid, 65, 58, 77, 243, 288, 291, 292

Euler, Leonhard, 43, 129, 130, 133, 134, 243, 286, 288, 492, 497, 498

 

Farad (unit), 270

Faraday (unit), 270

Faraday constant, 268, 469

Faraday, Michael, vii, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11-12, 51, 215, 240, 261, 265-281, 306, 490, 491

Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis, vii, 240, 265-282, 306, 486-487, 489, 491

Fermat's Last Theorem, 498

Fermi-Dirac Distribution Law, 479

Fermi energy, 219

Ferrel, William, 376

Feynman, Richard, 22, 28, 29, 69, 91, 106, 121, 135, 150, 220, 238, 245, 264, 279, 296, 334, 441, 443, 490

Fiber optics, 67

Fick, Adolf, 11, 365-372

Fick's Laws of Diffusion, 1, 365-372

Fick's Principle (cardiac physiology), 370

First Law of Thermodynamics, 310, 331

Flamsteed, John, 148

Fluids, 112-113, 310, 368, 437, 456-457. See also Archimedes' Principle of Buoyancy; Bernoulli's Law of Fluid Dynamics; Eötvös's Law of Capillarity; Fick's Laws of Diffusion; Poiseuille's Law of Fluid Flow; Stokes's Law of Viscosity; Torricelli's Law of Efflux

Fluorescence, 48, 346, 351, 355

Fourier series, 234-236, 497

Fourier's Law of Heat Conduction, 229-238, 251, 308, 360, 369, 486

Fourier's, Joseph, 10, 162, 229-238, 497

Fractals, 33, 141

Franck-Condon Principle of Electronic Redistribution, 478

Franz, Rudolf, 359-364

Fraunhofer lines, 317

Fraunhofer, Joseph von, 317

Fresnel, Augustin, 208

Fresnel-Arago Laws of Optics, 461

Friction, 94, 95, 97, 125, 157, 158, 168, 169, 307, 310, 312, 342-346, 349, 350

Friedel's Law of X-ray Reflection, 476

 

Galaxies, 2, 36, 98, 100, 103, 140, 141, 149, 302, 444-451, 493

Galileo, xi, 4, 7, 32, 37, 49, 52, 53, 57, 60, 64, 88, 94-96, 99, 108, 109, 112, 208, 255, 277, 358, 371, 443, 450, 451, 458, 490, 491

Gamow, George, 415, 449

Gardner, Martin, vi, viii, 2, 20, 210

Gas law, ideal, 86, 470

Gases, laws related to, 13, 19, 77, 216-218, 267, 308-309, 317, 319, 332-337, 369, 376, 464, 465, 467, 469, 470, 472, 493, 497. See also Avogadro's Gas Law; Boyle's Gas Law; Charles's Gas Law; Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures; Gay-Lussac's Law of Combining Gas Volumes; Graham's Law of Effusion; Henry's Gas Law

Gauss

constant, 287, 294

unit 284, 477

error function, 293

Gauss, Carl, 5, 6, 9, 13, 43, 282-296, 388, 498

brain of, 293

Gauss's Laws of Electricity and Magnetism, 278, 282-296, 487, 488

Gaussia, 293

Gaussian

distribution, 294

function, 294

gravitational constant, 294

Gay-Lussac, Joseph, 13, 162, 165, 179, 190-196, 225

Gay-Lussac's Law of Combining Gas Volumes, 13, 19, 165, 168, 190-196, 200

Geiger-Nuttall Rule of Particle Energy, 474

Gell-Mann, Murray, 486

Gibbs free energy, 337

Gibbs, Josiah, 121, 337-339

Gladstone-Dale Law of Refraction, 464

God. See Religion and God

Gough, John, 176

Graham, Thomas, 9-10, 256-264

Graham's Law of Effusion, 2, 86, 256-264

Gravity, 8, 17-19, 22, 81, 121, 122, 125, 146, 153-154, 156, 150, 160, 161, 183, 220, 294, 343, 344, 348, 350, 357, 364, 380-382, 406, 433, 445, 481-482, 486, 488, 493, 495. See also Newton, Isaac; Planets, positions and motions; Relativity, general theory

Grüneisen's Law of Thermal Expansion, 473

Guericke, Otto von, 275

 

Hagen, Gotthilf, 297, 301

Hagen-Poiseuille Law, 297

Hagenbach, Jacob, 301

Halley, Edmond, 15

Hamilton's Principle of Dynamical Systems, 461

Harriot, Thomas, 15, 71

Hawking, Stephen, xi, 1, 7, 23, 33, 103, 113, 143, 163, 348, 423, 480-483

Hawking's Black-Hole Laws, 480-483

Heat, 9, 33, 253, 312, 315-316, 320, 409, 463, 464, 468, 473, 486, 501. See also Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics; Dulong-Petit Law of Specific Heats; Fourier's Law of Heat Conduction; Joule's Law of Electric Heating; Newton's Laws of Motion, Gravitation, and Cooling; Planck's Law of Radiation; Wiedemann-Franz Law of Conductivity

Heaviside, Oliver, 202, 236, 487

Heisenberg, Werner, 20, 358, 434-443, 475, 479, 490, 491, 494

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, 2, 33, 255, 421, 434-443

Helmholtz, Hermann von, 275, 382

Henry, Joseph, 240, 252, 281

Henry, William 184-189

Henry's Gas Law, 184-189

Heptadecagon, 288

Herschel, William, 148, 165, 184

Hertz, Heinrich, 274, 493

Hess's Law of Constant Heat Summation, 338, 463

Hitler, Adolf, 416, 421, 440

Hooke, Robert, 9-10, 74-84, 88, 96, 114, 490

Hooke's Law of Elasticity, 19, 74-84

Hoyle, Fred, 449

Hubble, Edwin, 444-453

Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, 444-453, 493

Hubble Space Telescope, 446, 450

Human achievement, 489-490

Humason, Milton, 446

Humboldt, Alexander von. See von Humboldt, Alexander

Hurricanes, 133, 376

Huygens, Christian, 15, 66, 71, 77, 96, 490

Hysteresis, 477

 

Inertia, 94-95

Inertial reference frame, 99

Inverse-square principles, 26, 53, 81, 103, 110, 111, 114, 222

Islam, 31, 32, 37, 61

 

Jeans, James, 40, 235, 263, 294, 354, 413, 455

Jews, 32, 84, 416, 421, 440, 475

Joule (unit), 172, 212, 303, 310, 380, 413, 477

Joule, James, 6, 7, 35, 181-182, 303-312, 331, 333, 490

Joule's Law of Electric Heating, 253, 303-312, 331, 333

Joule-Thomson Effect, 309

 

Kaku, Michio, vii, 22, 83, 328

Kaleidoscope, 205, 207, 208

Kelvin (William Thomson) 6, 231, 244, 308-310, 333, 338, 347, 352

Kepler, Johannes, 6-7, 10-11, 19, 22, 28, 31, 49, 52-64, 70-71, 73, 98, 100-101, 110-111, 142, 202, 208, 237, 358, 406, 450, 488, 491, 498

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, 52-64

Kerst, Donald, 267

Kinetic Theory of Gases, 19, 29, 50, 334, 336, 369, 465, 467

Kirchhoff, Gustav, 6, 10, 313-222, 382, 418, 490

Kirchhoff's Circuit and Radiation Laws, 254, 289, 313-222, 409, 411

Kirchhoff's Laws of Spectral Formation, 316-317

Klein-Gordon Equation,

Kohlrausch, Friedrich, 11, 385-391

Kohlrausch's Laws of Conductivity, 385-391

Kopp's Law of Heat Capacity, 464

Kuhn, Thomas, 23, 264

 

Lambert, Johann, 5, 10, 137-143, 148, 356-357

Lambert's Cosine Law, 137

Lambert's Law of Emission, 137-143, 356-357

Land, Edwin, 207

Landauer, Rolf, 325

Laue, Max von, 428, 429

Lavoisier, Antoine, 233, 277, 491

Law of Multiple Proportions, 178

Law of Quadratic Reciprocity, 288

Lawgivers

absence of women, 27

afflictions, 9-10

childhood geniuses, 5

early death of wives, 6

effect of chance, 11-12

genius families, 11

interest in alien life, 10-11

nonconventional educations, 5

religiosity, 6-8, 32. See also Religion and God

resistance of parents, 9-10

resistance to ideas, 8-9

simultaneous discoveries, 12-13, 37

Laws

country or origin, 29-30, 456

distribution in time, 27-28, 455

empirical, 19

eponymous, 4-5, 12-16, 25-28, 35

invent versus discover, 2, 20

naming of. See Laws, eponymous

reality and, 21-24

simplicity, 2, 14, 16, 17, 20-23, 25, 40, 55, 60, 89, 91, 105, 124, 145, 150, 163, 189, 199, 211, 221, 245, 278, 280, 296, 334, 340, 364, 384, 424, 428, 436, 442, 454, 489, 501

versus equations, 487-489

versus theories, 16-20

Le Châtelier's Principle, 489

Leavitt's Luminosity Law, 475

Leibniz, Gottfried, 13, 110, 116, 128, 196, 420

Lemaitre, Georges, 449, 450

Lenz's Law, 266, 489

Leverrier, Urbain, 101

Light, 15, 17, 26, 44, 56, 81, 98, 102-104, 106, 113-114, 153, 218, 226, 270, 274, 276, 349-351, 362, 369, 375, 382, 388, 438, 444, 445, 458, 459, 461, 463, 466, 468, 475, 481, 486, 491. See also Beer's Law of Absorption; Bragg's Law of Crystal Diffraction; Brewster's Law of Light Polarization; Lambert's Law of Emission; Optics; Planck's Law of Radiation; Snell's Law of Refraction

Lobachevsky, Nikolai, 13, 292, 486

Logarithm formula, 497

Logistic mapping, 493

Lorentz's Force Law, 472

Lorentz-Lorenz Law of Refractive Indices, 466

Lorenz number, 359

Lorenz, Ludwig, 359, 466

Loschmidt, Johann, 198, 201

 

Mach, Ernst, 9, 336

Magnetism, vii,  2, 5, 8, 11, 24, 51, 61, 66, 70, 76, 100, 172, 192, 193, 203, 242, 246-247, 251, 361, 388, 390, 414, 441, 442, 472, 477, 480, 487-489, 494, 497. See also Ampčre's Circuital Law of Electromagnetism; Biot-Savart Law of Magnetic Force; Coulomb's Law of Electrostatics; Curie's Magnetism Law and the Curie-Weiss Law; Faraday's Laws of Induction and Electrolysis; Gauss's Laws of Electricity and Magnetism

Malus's Law of Polarization, 459

Mandelshtam, Leonid, 435

Marconi, Guglielmo, 274, 392

Mathematics and beauty, 485-486

Matrix mechanics, 438

Matthiessen's Rule of Electrical Resistivity, 465

Maupertuis's Rule of Least Action, 458

Maxwell, James Clerk, 6, 8, 51, 121, 240, 242, 247, 265, 266, 272, 274, 277, 334, 338, 352, 373, 465, 467, 488, 490.  See also Maxwell's Equations

Maxwell's Equations, 27, 66, 240, 278-279, 328, 473, 486, 487, 492, 493, 497

Maxwell's Law of Gas Viscosity, 465

Mayer, Julius von, 304

Mayer, Tobias, 148

Mean, arithmetic-geometric, 287-288

Meitner, Lisa, 336

MEMS, 169

Mendeleyev's Periodic Law of Elements, 466

Mersenne's Law of Vibration, 455

Merton, Robert, 4, 15

Meteorology. See Buys-Ballot's Wind and Pressure Law

Michell, John, 159-160, 381

Mitscherlich's Law of Isomorphism, 461

Momentum, 19, 53, 54, 95-98, 434-435, 439, 440, 494

MOND, 103

Monopoles, magnetic, 278, 284, 487, 494

Moseley's Law of X-ray Emission, 476

Moskowitz-Lombardi Rule of Magnetic Distribution, 480

 

Napier's logarithm formula, 497

Navier, Claude, 349, 350

Navier-Stokes Equations, 350

Nernst, Walter, 327, 469

Nernst's Law of Electrode Potentials, 469

Neumann, Franz, 301

Newton, Isaac, vii, ix, 1-3, 7-9, 13-14, 17-18, 31, 43, 75-76, 81-82, 93-124, 208, 224, 252, 277, 286, 295, 408, 424, 442, 443, 454, 490-492, 498, 501

Newton's Laws of Motion, Gravitation, and Cooling, 1, 7, 19, 22, 26, 28, 31, 51, 53-55,  61, 81, 93-124, 153-154, 382, 391, 443, 488, 492, 497

Newtonian fluids, 113

Nicaragua postage stamps, 496-497

Nobel Prize, 5, 11, 33, 236, 248, 318, 379, 390, 396, 401, 402, 411, 415, 417, 420, 421, 426, 427, 429, 430, 439, 444, 466, 469, 471, 475, 476

 

Ohm (unit), 172, 246, 248, 250, 253, 303, 361 

Ohm, Georg, 5, 8-9, 246-255

Ohm's Law of Electricity, 8, 19, 246-255, 319, 385, 391

Olbers, Heinrich, 202, 285, 446

Onnes, Heike, 248

Optics, 9, 17, 56, 57, 66-67, 113, 114, 117, 118, 226, 350, 380, 429, 459, 461, 462. See also Beer's Law of Absorption; Brewster's Law of Light Polarization; Fresnel-Arago Laws of Optics; Lambert's Law of Emission; Light; Snell's Law of Refraction

Řrsted, Hans Christian, 8, 225, 239-242, 275, 277

Osmosis, 363, 470

Ostwald, Wilhelm, 9, 336, 387, 389, 390

Ostwald's Dilution Law, 387

 

Parallel universes, 103, 451

Paramagnetism. See Curie's Magnetism Law and Curie-Weiss Law

Pascal (unit), 85, 174, 342

Pauli Wolfgang, 436-439, 478-479, 491

Pauli's Exclusion Principle, 478-479

Penrose, Roger, 21, 23-24, 188, 311, 482

Permittivity, 152, 154, 155, 287, 419

Persian Gulf War, 345

Perutz, Max, 426, 428, 431

Petit, Alexis, 5, 6, 9, 212-221

Photoelectric effect, 420

Photonic lattice, 422

Pi (π), 5, 46, 47, 49, 54, 70,111, 138, 141, 152, 154, 219, 222, 223, 234, 293, 294, 297, 301, 342, 359, 412, 419, 434, 480, 492, 493, 496

Piazzi, Giuseppe, 290

Piezoelectricity, 398, 399

Planck units, 418-419, 481 

Planck, Max, 6, 263, 320, 409-424

Planck's constant, 219, 410, 414, 415, 419, 434, 493, 494, 497

Planck's Law of Radiation, 28, 316, 409-424

Planets, positions and motions. See Bode's Law of Planetary Distances; Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion; Newton's Laws of Motion, Gravitation, and Cooling

Platonic solids, 58-59, 60

Poise (unit), 301

Poiseuille, 297-302

Poiseuille's Law of Fluid Flow, 250, 297-302

Poisson, Simeon, 162, 349

Polarization, 226, 276, 350, 351, 362, 459, 461.  See also Brewster's Law of Light Polarization

Polaroid, 204

Popper, Karl, 17, 150, 263, 264, 321, 354, 391, 483

Pressures, 10, 42, 43, 46, 50, 80, 113, 134, 217, 250, 261, 306-309, 325, 331, 337, 350, 363, 369, 370, 465, 469, 470, 489, 491. See also Bernoulli's Law of Fluid Dynamics; Buys-Ballot's Wind and Pressure Law; Gases, laws related to; Poiseuille's Law of Fluid Flow

Priestly, Joseph, 160, 259

Prime number theorem, 288-289

Principle of Least Action, 458, 492

Ptolemy, 71, 120, 210

Pythagorean Theorem, 497

Quantum mechanics, 18, 28, 29, 32-33, 98, 102, 164, 212, 218, 221, 248, 255, 281, 328, 341, 361, 364, 406, 409-424, 435, 438-441, 461, 466, 474, 475, 478-479, 481, 487, 494, 499. See also Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; Pauli's Exclusion Principle; Planck's Radiation Law

Quantum nanowires, 361

 

Raindrops, 69, 96, 112, 344, 345, 350

Ramsay-Young Law of Vapor Pressures, 470

Raoult's Law of Vapor Pressures, 469

Rayleigh-Jeans Law, 413, 416

Reality and laws, 21-24

Redshifts, 444, 445, 450

Refraction. See Snell's Law of Refraction; Lorentz-Lorenz Law of Refractive Indices

Relativity, 28, 341, 440, 475

      differences between special and general, 102

general theory, 17, 22, 29, 55, 73, 102, 103, 124, 163, 221, 382, 449, 481, 482, 488, 490, 493, 495

special theory, 16, 29, 98, 102, 153, 188, 189, 381, 416, 466, 488, 490, 491, 494

terminology, viii-ix

Religion and God, v, vi, 1, 3, 4, 6-8, 10, 22, 31, 32, 37, 48, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 77, 83, 87, 89, 90, 92, 105-108, 112, 113, 120, 121, 128, 135, 140, 141, 146, 148, 149, 150, 164, 170, 182-183, 188, 196, 201, 205, 206, 228, 241, 243, 244, 254, 269-271, 281, 286, 293, 295, 302, 305, 306, 310, 311, 347-349, 352-354, 358, 362, 374, 378, 384, 391, 404, 406, 408, 416, 418, 419, 421, 423, 427, 437, 441, 442, 447, 454, 456, 464, 483, 485, 489, 498-500

Resistance, electrical. See Ohm's Law of Electricity; Matthiessen's Rule of Electrical Resistivity

Richter's Law of Chemical Reactions, 459

Right-hand rule, 223-224

Robertson, H. P., 449

Rowland's Law, 247

Rutherford, Ernest, 23, 153, 402, 490-491

 

Sabine's Law of Acoustics, 473

Saint-Venant, Adhémar de, 349

Sandage, Allan, 446

Sandemanian, 269-271, 273, 275

Savart (unit), 227

Savart, Félix, 5, 222-228

Schrödinger, Erwin, 436, 479, 490, 491

Schrödinger's Equation, 27, 436, 487, 489, 492, 493-495

Schwarzchild, Karl, 481

Scuba divers, 174, 185

Second Law of Thermodynamics, 245, 323-339, 391, 491.  See also Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics; Heat; Joule's Law of Electric Heating

Sedimentation, 342, 343, 345

Shannon, Claude, 325

Shannon's Equations, 493

Simplicity. See Laws, simplicity

Simultaneity. See Lawgivers, simultaneous discoveries

Snell, Willebrord, 15, 65-73, 203

Snell's Law of Refraction, 19, 65-73, 203, 391

Sommerfeld, Arnold, 436, 437, 440

Spectroscopy, 260, 315-320, 351, 355, 357, 362, 429, 430, 438, 439, 445, 446, 450, 468, 475, 476, 478, 479, 480, 492.  See also Planck's Law of Radiation

St. Petersburg Paradox, 129

Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law, 411-412

Steinmetz's Law of Magnetism, 477

Stenger, Victor, 24

Stereoscope, 208

Stigler's Law of Eponymy, 14-15

Stokes Law of Fluorescence, 351

Stokes, George, 3, 342-354

Stokes's Law of Viscosity, 342-354

Stokes-Einstein Relation, 346

String theory, 16, 22, 210, 302

Surface tension, 379-381

Sutherland's Law of Gas Viscosity, 472

Symmetry, 2, 58, 72, 83, 101, 188-189, 208, 283, 284, 399, 424, 436, 442, 448, 476, 486

 

Tamm, Igor, 435

Tegmark, Max, 23

Thenard, Jacques, 162, 194, 195, 216

Theories versus laws, 16-20

Thermodynamics 9, 11, 29, 245, 304, 323-339, 403, 411, 418, 481, 491, 501.  See also Clausius's Law of Thermodynamics; Heat; Joule's Law of Electric Heating

Third Law of Thermodynamics, 327

Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin) 6, 231, 244, 308-310, 333, 338, 347, 352

Titius, Daniel, 144-147

Titius-Bode Law 144-147. See also Bode's Law

Torricelli's Law of Efflux, 456

Torsion balance, 99, 157-160, 362, 381, 382, 399

Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation

 

Ultraviolet catastrophe, 413

 

van't Hoff's Law of Osmotic Pressure, 470

Venturi effect, 126

Viscosity, 113, 125, 158, 297-301, 310, 342-350, 388, 457, 465, 472

von Humboldt, Alexander, 190, 193, 460

von Humboldt's Law of Tree Lines, 460

 

Watson, James, 431

Weber, Wilhelm, 289, 388, 390

Webers (unit), 240, 266, 278

Weiss, Pierre, 392-408

Wiedemann, Gustav, 11, 359-364

Wiedemann-Franz Law of Conductivity, 11, 359-364

Wiedemann-Franz-Lorenz Law, 359

Wien's Displacement Law, 410-411, 416

Wien's Radiation Law, 416

Wigner, Eugene, 452

Wilberforce, Lionel, 298

 

X-rays, 48, 267, 351, 392, 476. See also Bragg's Law of Crystal Diffraction

 

Yang-Mills Equation, 493

Young's modulus, 75, 133

 

Zach, Franz Xaver von, 290

Zero-point motion, 328

Debate the meaning of scientific laws

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