physical science, principles ofthe procedures and concepts employed by those who study the inorganic world.





The development of quantitative science





Examples of the scientific method












Galileo’s law of acceleration, the physical basis of the expression 2π(r/c) for the period, is further strengthened by finding that T varies directly as the square root of ri.e., the length of the pendulum.


Criterion for scientific theory


The Newtonian paradigm


Laws of motion

Newton’s first law may more properly be ascribed to Galileo. It states that a body continues at rest or in uniform motion along a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force, and it enables one to recognize when a force is acting. A tennis ball struck by a racket experiences a sudden change in its motion attributable to a force exerted by the racket. The player feels the shock of the impact. According to Newton’s third law (action and reaction are equal and opposite), the force that the ball exerts on the racket is equal and opposite to that which the racket exerts on the ball. Moreover, a second balanced action and reaction acts between player and racket.

Newton’s second law quantifies the concept of force, as well as that of inertia. A body acted upon by a steady force suffers constant acceleration. Thus a freely falling body or a ball rolling down a plane has constant acceleration, as has been seen, and this is to be interpreted in Newton’s terms as evidence that the force of gravity, which causes the acceleration, is not changed by the body’s motion. The same force (e.g., applied by a string which includes a spring balance to check that the force is the same in different experiments) applied to different bodies causes different accelerations; and it is found that, if a chosen strength of force causes twice the acceleration in body A as it does in body B, then a different force also causes twice as much acceleration in A as in B. The ratio of accelerations is independent of the force and is therefore a property of the bodies alone. They are said to have inertia (or inertial mass) in inverse proportion to the accelerations. This experimental fact, which is the essence of Newton’s second law, enables one to assign a number to every body that is a measure of its mass. Thus a certain body may be chosen as a standard of mass and assigned the number 1. Another body is said to have mass m if the body shows only a fraction 1/m of the acceleration of this standard when the two are subjected to the same force. By proceeding in this way, every body may be assigned a mass. It is because experiment allows this definition to be made that a given force causes every body to show acceleration f such that mf is the same for all bodies. This means that the product mf is determined only by the force and not by the particular body on which it acts, and mf is defined to be the numerical measure of the force. In this way a consistent set of measures of force and mass is arrived at, having the property that F = mf. In this equation F, m, and f are to be interpreted as numbers measuring the strength of the force, the magnitude of the mass, and the rate of acceleration; and the product of the numbers m and f is always equal to the number F. The product mv, called motus (motion) by Newton, is now termed momentum. Newton’s second law states that the rate of change of momentum equals the strength of the applied force.

In order to assign a numerical measure m to the mass of a body, a standard of mass must be chosen and assigned the value m = 1. Similarly, to measure displacement a unit of length is needed, and for velocity and acceleration a unit of time also must be defined. Given these, the numerical measure of a force follows from mf without need to define a unit of force. Thus, in the Système Internationale d’Unités (SI), in which the units are the standard kilogram, the standard metre, and the standard second, a force of magnitude unity is one that, applied to a mass of one kilogram, causes its velocity to increase steadily by one metre per second during every second the force is acting.

Law of gravitation

The idealized observation of Galileo that all bodies in free-fall accelerate equally implies that the gravitational force causing acceleration bears a constant relation to the inertial mass. According to Newton’s postulated law of gravitation, two bodies of mass m1 and m2, separated by a distance r. , exert equal attractive forces on each other (the equal action and reaction of the third law of motion) of magnitude proportional to m1m2/r2. The constant of proportionality, G, in the gravitational law, F = Gm1m2/r2, is thus to be regarded as a universal constant, applying to all bodies, whatever their constitution. The constancy of gravitational acceleration, g, at a given point on the Earth is a particular case of this general law.

Application of Newton’s laws



Ensuing developments and their ramifications

Newton believed that everything moved in relation to a fixed but undetectable spatial frame so that it could be said to have an absolute velocity. Time also flowed at the same steady pace everywhere. Even if there were no matter in the universe, the frame of the universe would still exist, and time would still flow even though there was no one to observe its passage. In Newton’s view, when matter is present it is unaffected by its motion through space. If the length of a moving metre stick were compared with the length of one at rest, they would be found to be the same. Clocks keep universal time whether they are moving or not; therefore, two identical clocks, initially synchronized, would still be synchronized after one had been carried into space and brought back. The laws of motion take such a form that they are not changed by uniform motion. They were devised to describe accurately the response of bodies to forces whether in the heavens or on the Earth, and they lose no validity as a result of the Earth’s motion at 30 kilometres per second in its orbit around the Sun. This motion, in fact, would not be discernible by an observer in a closed box. The supposed invariance of the laws of motion, in addition to standards of measurement, to uniform translation was called “Galilean invariance” by Einstein.

The impossibility of discerning absolute velocity led in Newton’s time to critical doubts concerning the necessity of postulating an absolute frame of space and universal time, and the doubts of the philosophers George Berkeley and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, among others, were still more forcibly presented in the severe analysis of the foundations of classical mechanics by the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach in 1883. James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic phenomena (1865), including his description of light as electromagnetic waves, brought the problem to a state of crisis. It became clear that if light waves were propagated in the hypothetical ether that filled all space and provided an embodiment of Newton’s absolute frame (see below), it would not be logically consistent to accept both Maxwell’s theory and the ideas expressed in Galilean invariance, for the speed of light as it passed an observer would reveal how rapidly he was traveling through the ether.

Ingenious attempts by the physicists George FitzGerald of Ireland and Hendrik A. Lorentz of The Netherlands to devise a compromise to salvage the notion of ether were eventually superseded by Einstein’s special theory of relativity (see relativity). Einstein proposed in 1905 that all laws of physics, not solely those of mechanics, must take the same form for observers moving uniformly relative to one another, however rapidly. In particular, if two observers, using identical metre sticks and clocks, set out to measure the speed of a light signal as it passes them, both would obtain the same value no matter what their relative velocity might be; in a Newtonian world, of course, the measured values would differ by the relative velocity of the two observers. This is but one example of the counterintuitive character of relativistic physics, but the deduced consequences of Einstein’s postulate have been so frequently and so accurately verified by experiment that it has been incorporated as a fundamental axiom in physical theory.

With the abandonment of the ether hypothesis, there has been a reversion to a philosophical standpoint reluctantly espoused by Newton. To him and to his contemporaries the idea that two bodies could exert gravitational forces on each other across immense distances of empty space was abhorrent. However, attempts to develop Descartes’s notion of a space-filling fluid ether as a transmitting medium for forces invariably failed to account for the inverse square law. Newton himself adopted a pragmatic approach, deducing the consequences of his laws and showing how well they agreed with observation; he was by no means satisfied that a mechanical explanation was impossible, but he confessed in the celebrated remark, “Hypotheses non fingo” (Latin: “I frame no hypotheses”), that he had no solution to offer.

A similar reversion to the safety of mathematical description is represented by the rejection, during the early 1900s, of the explanatory ether models of the 19th century and their replacement by model-free analysis in terms of relativity theory. This certainly does not imply giving up the use of models as imaginative aids in extending theories, predicting new effects, or devising interesting experiments; if nothing better is available, however, a mathematical formulation that yields verifiably correct results is to be preferred over an intuitively acceptable model that does not.

Interplay of experiment and theory

The foregoing discussion should have made clear that progress in physics, as in the other sciences, arises from a close interplay of experiment and theory. In a well-established field like classical mechanics, it may appear that experiment is almost unnecessary and all that is needed is the mathematical or computational skill to discover the solutions of the equations of motion. This view, however, overlooks the role of observation or experiment in setting up the problem in the first place. To discover the conditions under which a bicycle is stable in an upright position or can be made to turn a corner, it is first necessary to invent and observe a bicycle. The equations of motion are so general and serve as the basis for describing so extended a range of phenomena that the mathematician must usually look at the behaviour of real objects in order to select those that are both interesting and soluble. His analysis may indeed suggest the existence of interesting related effects that can be examined in the laboratory; thus, the invention or discovery of new things may be initiated by the experimenter or the theoretician. To employ terms such as this has led, especially in the 20th century, to a common assumption that experimentation and theorizing are distinct activities, rarely performed by the same person. It is true that almost all active physicists pursue their vocation primarily in one mode or the other. Nevertheless, the innovative experimenter can hardly make progress without an informed appreciation of the theoretical structure, even if he is not technically competent to find the solution of particular mathematical problems. By the same token, the innovative theorist must be deeply imbued with the way real objects behave, even if he is not technically competent to put together the apparatus to examine the problem. The fundamental unity of physical science should be borne in mind during the following outline of characteristic examples of experimental and theoretical physics.

Characteristic experimental procedures
Unexpected observation

The discovery of X rays (1895) by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen of Germany was certainly serendipitous. It began with his noticing that when an electric current was passed through a discharge tube a nearby fluorescent screen lit up, even though the tube was completely wrapped in black paper.

Ernest Marsden, a student engaged on a project, reported to his professor, Ernest Rutherford (then at the University of Manchester in England), that alpha particles from a radioactive source were occasionally deflected more than 90° when they hit a thin metal foil. Astonished at this observation, Rutherford deliberated on the experimental data to formulate his nuclear model of the atom (1911).

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes of The Netherlands, the first to liquefy helium, cooled a thread of mercury to within 4 K of absolute zero (4 K equals -269° C) to test his belief that electrical resistance would tend to vanish at zero. This was what the first experiment seemed to verify, but a more careful repetition showed that instead of falling gradually, as he expected, all trace of resistance disappeared abruptly just above 4 K. This phenomenon of superconductivity, which Kamerlingh Onnes discovered in 1911, defied theoretical explanation until 1957.

The not-so-unexpected chance

From 1807 the Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted came to believe that electrical phenomena could influence magnets, but it was not until 1819 that he turned his investigations to the effects produced by an electric current. On the basis of his tentative models he tried on several occasions to see if a current in a wire caused a magnet needle to turn when it was placed transverse to the wire, but without success. Only when it occurred to him, without forethought, to arrange the needle parallel on the wire did the long-sought effect appear.

A second example of this type of experimental situation involves the discovery of electromagnetic induction by the English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday. Aware that an electrically charged body induces a charge in a nearby body, Faraday sought to determine whether a steady current in a coil of wire would induce such a current in another short-circuited coil close to it. He found no effect except in instances where the current in the first coil was switched on or off, at which time a momentary current appeared in the other. He was in effect led to the concept of electromagnetic induction by changing magnetic fields.

Qualitative tests to distinguish alternative theories


Another qualitative difference between the wave and corpuscular theories concerned the speed of light in a transparent medium. To explain the bending of light rays toward the normal to the surface when light entered the medium, the corpuscular theory demanded that light go faster while the wave theory required that it go slower. Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault showed that the latter was correct (1850).

The three categories of experiments or observations discussed above are those that do not demand high-precision measurement. The following, however, are categories in which measurement at varying degrees of precision is involved.

Direct comparison of theory and experiment

This is one of the commonest experimental situations. Typically, a theoretical model makes certain specific predictions, perhaps novel in character, perhaps novel only in differing from the predictions of competing theories. There is no fixed standard by which the precision of measurement may be judged adequate. As is usual in science, the essential question is whether the conclusion carries conviction, and this is conditioned by the strength of opinion regarding alternative conclusions.

Where strong prejudice obtains, opponents of a heterodox conclusion may delay acceptance indefinitely by insisting on a degree of scrupulosity in experimental procedure that they would unhesitatingly dispense with in other circumstances. For example, few experiments in paranormal phenomena, such as clairvoyance, which have given positive results under apparently stringent conditions, have made converts among scientists. In the strictly physical domain, the search for ether drift provides an interesting study. At the height of acceptance of the hypothesis that light waves are carried by a pervasive ether, the question of whether the motion of the Earth through space dragged the ether with it was tested (1887) by A.A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley of the United States by looking for variations in the velocity of light as it traveled in different directions in the laboratory. Their conclusion was that there was a small variation, considerably less than the Earth’s velocity in its orbit around the Sun, and that the ether was therefore substantially entrained in the Earth’s motion. According to Einstein’s relativity theory (1905), no variation should have been observed, but during the next 20 years another American investigator, Dayton C. Miller, repeated the experiment many times in different situations and concluded that, at least on a mountaintop, there was a real “ether wind” of about 10 kilometres per second. Although Miller’s final presentation was a model of clear exposition, with evidence scrupulously displayed and discussed, it has been set aside and virtually forgotten. This is partly because other experiments failed to show the effect; however, their conditions were not strictly comparable, since few, if any, were conducted on mountaintops. More significantly, other tests of relativity theory supported it in so many different ways as to lead to the consensus that one discrepant set of observations cannot be allowed to weigh against the theory.

At the opposite extreme may be cited the 1919 expedition of the English scientist-mathematician Arthur Stanley Eddington to measure the very small deflection of the light from a star as it passed close to the Sun—a measurement that requires a total eclipse. The theories involved here were Einstein’s general theory of relativity and the Newtonian particle theory of light, which predicted only half the relativistic effect. The conclusion of this exceedingly difficult measurement—that Einstein’s theory was followed within the experimental limits of error, which amounted to ±30 percent—was the signal for worldwide feting of Einstein. If his theory had not appealed aesthetically to those able to appreciate it and if there had been any passionate adherents to the Newtonian view, the scope for error could well have been made the excuse for a long drawn-out struggle, especially since several repetitions at subsequent eclipses did little to improve the accuracy. In this case, then, the desire to believe was easily satisfied. It is gratifying to note that recent advances in radio astronomy have allowed much greater accuracy to be achieved, and Einstein’s prediction is now verified within about 1 percent.

During the decade after his expedition, Eddington developed an extremely abstruse fundamental theory that led him to assert that the quantity hc/2πe2 (h is Planck’s constant, c the velocity of light, and e the charge on the electron) must take the value 137 exactly. At the time, uncertainties in the values of h and e allowed its measured value to be given as 137.29 ± 0.11; in accordance with the theory of errors, this implies that there was estimated to be about a 1 percent chance that a perfectly precise measurement would give 137. In the light of Eddington’s great authority there were many prepared to accede to his belief. Since then the measured value of this quantity has come much closer to Eddington’s prediction and is given as 137.03604 ± 0.00011. The discrepancy, though small, is 330 times the estimated error, compared with 2.6 times for the earlier measurement, and therefore a much more weighty indication against Eddington’s theory. As the intervening years have cast no light on the virtual impenetrability of his argument, there is now hardly a physicist who takes it seriously.

Compilation of data

Technical design, whether of laboratory instruments or for industry and commerce, depends on knowledge of the properties of materials (density, strength, electrical conductivity, etc.), some of which can only be found by very elaborate experiments (e.g., those dealing with the masses and excited states of atomic nuclei). One of the important functions of standards laboratories is to improve and extend the vast body of factual information, but much also arises incidentally rather than as the prime objective of an investigation or may be accumulated in the hope of discovering regularities or to test the theory of a phenomenon against a variety of occurrences.

When chemical compounds are heated in a flame, the resulting colour can be used to diagnose the presence of sodium (orange), copper (green-blue), and many other elements. This procedure has long been used. Spectroscopic examination shows that every element has its characteristic set of spectral lines, and the discovery by the Swiss mathematician Johann Jakob Balmer of a simple arithmetic formula relating the wavelengths of lines in the hydrogen spectrum (1885) proved to be the start of intense activity in precise wavelength measurements of all known elements and the search for general principles. With the Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s quantum theory of the hydrogen atom (1913) began an understanding of the basis of Balmer’s formula; thenceforward spectroscopic evidence underpinned successive developments toward what is now a successful theory of atomic structure.

Tests of fundamental concepts

Coulomb’s law states that the force between two electric charges varies as the inverse square of their separation. Direct tests, such as those performed with a special torsion balance by the French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, for whom the law is named, can be at best approximate. A very sensitive indirect test, devised by the English scientist and clergyman Joseph Priestley (following an observation by Benjamin Franklin) but first realized by the English physicist and chemist Henry Cavendish (1771), relies on the mathematical demonstration that no electrical changes occurring outside a closed metal shell—as, for example, by connecting it to a high voltage source—produce any effect inside if the inverse square law holds. Since modern amplifiers can detect minute voltage changes, this test can be made very sensitive. It is typical of the class of null measurements in which only the theoretically expected behaviour leads to no response and any hypothetical departure from theory gives rise to a response of calculated magnitude. It has been shown in this way that if the force between charges, r apart, is proportional not to 1/r2 but to 1/r2+x, then x is less than 2 × 10-9.

According to the relativistic theory of the hydrogen atom proposed by the English physicist P.A.M. Dirac (1928), there should be two different excited states exactly coinciding in energy. Measurements of spectral lines resulting from transitions in which these states were involved hinted at minute discrepancies, however. Some years later (c. 1950) Willis E. Lamb, Jr., and Robert C. Retherford of the United States, employing the novel microwave techniques that wartime radar contributed to peacetime research, were able not only to detect the energy difference between the two levels directly but to measure it rather precisely as well. The difference in energy, compared to the energy above the ground state, amounts to only four parts in 10,000,000, but this was one of the crucial pieces of evidence that led to the development of quantum electrodynamics, a central feature of the modern theory of fundamental particles (see subatomic particle: Quantum electrodynamics).

Characteristic theoretical procedures

Only at rare intervals in the development of a subject, and then only with the involvement of a few, are theoretical physicists engaged in introducing radically new concepts. The normal practice is to apply established principles to new problems so as to extend the range of phenomena that can be understood in some detail in terms of accepted fundamental ideas. Even when, as with the quantum mechanics of Werner Heisenberg (formulated in terms of matrices; 1925) and of Erwin Schrödinger (developed on the basis of wave functions; 1926), a major revolution is initiated, most of the accompanying theoretical activity involves investigating the consequences of the new hypothesis as if it were fully established in order to discover critical tests against experimental facts. There is little to be gained by attempting to classify the process of revolutionary thought because every case history throws up a different pattern. What follows is a description of typical procedures as normally used in theoretical physics. As in the preceding section, it will be taken for granted that the essential preliminary of coming to grips with the nature of the problem in general descriptive terms has been accomplished, so that the stage is set for systematic, usually mathematical, analysis.

Direct solution of fundamental equations

Insofar as the Sun and planets, with their attendant satellites, can be treated as concentrated masses moving under their mutual gravitational influences, they form a system that has not so overwhelmingly many separate units as to rule out step-by-step calculation of the motion of each. Modern high-speed computers are admirably adapted to this task and are used in this way to plan space missions and to decide on fine adjustments during flight. Most physical systems of interest, however, are either composed of too many units or are governed not by the rules of classical mechanics but rather by quantum mechanics, which is much less suited for direct computation.


The mechanical behaviour of a body is analyzed in terms of Newton’s laws of motion by imagining it dissected into a number of parts, each of which is directly amenable to the application of the laws or has been separately analyzed by further dissection so that the rules governing its overall behaviour are known. A very simple illustration of the method is given by the arrangement in Figure 5A, where two masses are joined by a light string passing over a pulley. The heavier mass, m1, falls with constant acceleration, but what is the magnitude of the acceleration? If the string were cut, each mass would experience the force, m1g or m2g, due to its gravitational attraction and would fall with acceleration g. The fact that the string prevents this is taken into account by assuming that it is in tension and also acts on each mass. When the string is cut just above m2, the state of accelerated motion just before the cut can be restored by applying equal and opposite forces (in accordance with Newton’s third law) to the cut ends, as in Figure 5B; the string above the cut pulls the string below upward with a force T, while the string below pulls that above downward to the same extent. As yet, the value of T is not known. Now if the string is light, the tension T is sensibly the same everywhere along it, as may be seen by imagining a second cut, higher up, to leave a length of string acted upon by T at the bottom and possibly a different force T′ at the second cut. The total force T - T′ on the string must be very small if the cut piece is not to accelerate violently, and, if the mass of the string is neglected altogether, T and T′ must be equal. This does not apply to the tension on the two sides of the pulley, for some resultant force will be needed to give it the correct accelerative motion as the masses move. This is a case for separate examination, by further dissection, of the forces needed to cause rotational acceleration. To simplify the problem one can assume the pulley to be so light that the difference in tension on the two sides is negligible. Then the problem has been reduced to two elementary parts—on the right the upward force on m2 is T - m2g, so that its acceleration upward is T/m2 - g; and on the left the downward force on m1 is m1g - T, so that its acceleration downward is g - T/m1. If the string cannot be extended, these two accelerations must be identical, from which it follows that T = 2m1m2g/(m1 + m2) and the acceleration of each mass is g(m1 - m2)/(m1 + m2). Thus if one mass is twice the other (m1 = 2m2), its acceleration downward is g/3.

A liquid may be imagined divided into small volume elements, each of which moves in response to gravity and the forces imposed by its neighbours (pressure and viscous drag). The forces are constrained by the requirement that the elements remain in contact, even though their shapes and relative positions may change with the flow. From such considerations are derived the differential equations that describe fluid motion (see fluid mechanics).

The dissection of a system into many simple units in order to describe the behaviour of a complex structure in terms of the laws governing the elementary components is sometimes referred to, often with a pejorative implication, as reductionism. Insofar as it may encourage concentration on those properties of the structure that can be explained as the sum of elementary processes to the detriment of properties that arise only from the operation of the complete structure, the criticism must be considered seriously. The physical scientist is, however, well aware of the existence of the problem (see below Simplicity and complexity). If he is usually unrepentant about his reductionist stance, it is because this analytical procedure is the only systematic procedure he knows, and it is one that has yielded virtually the whole harvest of scientific inquiry. What is set up as a contrast to reductionism by its critics is commonly called the holistic approach, whose title confers a semblance of high-mindedness while hiding the poverty of tangible results it has produced.

Simplified models

The process of dissection was early taken to its limit in the kinetic theory of gases, which in its modern form essentially started with the suggestion of the Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (in 1738) that the pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container is the sum of innumerable collisions by individual molecules, all moving independently of each other. Boyle’s law—that the pressure exerted by a given gas is proportional to its density if the temperature is kept constant as the gas is compressed or expanded—follows immediately from Bernoulli’s assumption that the mean speed of the molecules is determined by temperature alone. Departures from Boyle’s law require for their explanation the assumption of forces between the molecules. It is very difficult to calculate the magnitude of these forces from first principles, but reasonable guesses about their form led Maxwell (1860) and later workers to explain in some detail the variation with temperature of thermal conductivity and viscosity, while the Dutch physicist Johannes Diederik van der Waals (1873) gave the first theoretical account of the condensation to liquid and the critical temperature above which condensation does not occur.

The first quantum mechanical treatment of electrical conduction in metals was provided in 1928 by the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who used a greatly simplified model in which electrons were assumed to roam freely (much like non-interacting molecules of a gas) within the metal as if it were a hollow container. The most remarkable simplification, justified at the time by its success rather than by any physical argument, was that the electrical force between electrons could be neglected. Since then, justification—without which the theory would have been impossibly complicated—has been provided in the sense that means have been devised to take account of the interactions whose effect is indeed considerably weaker than might have been supposed. In addition, the influence of the lattice of atoms on electronic motion has been worked out for many different metals. This development involved experimenters and theoreticians working in harness; the results of specially revealing experiments served to check the validity of approximations without which the calculations would have required excessive computing time.

These examples serve to show how real problems almost always demand the invention of models in which, it is hoped, the most important features are correctly incorporated while less-essential features are initially ignored and allowed for later if experiment shows their influence not to be negligible. In almost all branches of mathematical physics there are systematic procedures—namely, perturbation techniques—for adjusting approximately correct models so that they represent the real situation more closely.

Recasting of basic theory

Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitation and Coulomb’s law for the forces between charged particles lead to the idea of energy as a quantity that is conserved in a wide range of phenomena (see below Conservation laws and extremal principles). It is frequently more convenient to use conservation of energy and other quantities than to start an analysis from the primitive laws. Other procedures are based on showing that, of all conceivable outcomes, the one followed is that for which a particular quantity takes a maximum or a minimum value—e.g., entropy change in thermodynamic processes, action in mechanical processes, and optical path length for light rays.

General observations

The foregoing accounts of characteristic experimental and theoretical procedures are necessarily far from exhaustive. In particular, they say too little about the technical background to the work of the physical scientist. The mathematical techniques used by the modern theoretical physicist are frequently borrowed from the pure mathematics of past eras. The work of Augustin-Louis Cauchy on functions of a complex variable, of Arthur Cayley and James Joseph Sylvester on matrix algebra, and of Bernhard Riemann on non-Euclidean geometry, to name but a few, were investigations undertaken with little or no thought for practical applications.

The experimental physicist, for his part, has benefited greatly from technological progress and from instrumental developments that were undertaken in full knowledge of their potential research application but were nevertheless the product of single-minded devotion to the perfecting of an instrument as a worthy thing-in-itself. The developments during World War II provide the first outstanding example of technology harnessed on a national scale to meet a national need. Postwar advances in nuclear physics and in electronic circuitry, applied to almost all branches of research, were founded on the incidental results of this unprecedented scientific enterprise. The semiconductor industry sprang from the successes of microwave radar and, in its turn, through the transistor, made possible the development of reliable computers with power undreamed of by the wartime pioneers of electronic computing. From all these, the research scientist has acquired the means to explore otherwise inaccessible problems. Of course, not all of the important tools of modern-day science were the by-products of wartime research. The electron microscope is a good case in point. Moreover, this instrument may be regarded as a typical example of the sophisticated equipment to be found in all physical laboratories, of a complexity that the research-oriented user frequently does not understand in detail, and whose design depended on skills he rarely possesses.

It should not be thought that the physicist does not give a just return for the tools he borrows. Engineering and technology are deeply indebted to pure science, while much modern pure mathematics can be traced back to investigations originally undertaken to elucidate a scientific problem.