Sunday, March 4, 2012

A question for you history of science buffs...

If I were writing about Keynes's view of Newton, perhaps contrasting it with contemporary Soviet scientists, are there any Soviet histories of science or approaches to thinking about science - particularly concerning Newton - that I am really obligated to cover?

The heart of this section is a contrast between Sergei Vavilov and Keynes, so I have Vavilov covered. I think he is the undisputed Soviet authority on Newton in the mid-2oth century. But I don't want to leave out any obvious ones that I should at least mention.

1 comment:

  1. It is slightly long in the tooth these days, but see _Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History_ (mid-1990s). Therein you'll find a discussion of Boris Hessen's quite influential and famous paper on Newton (you ought to be able to find a copy of it online - I have one on my hard drive); a paper which was well received amongst the British scientific community - we're talking about people like Haldane. Vavilov was Hessen's boss at the Physics Institute in Moscow until Hessen was arrested in 1936; Hessen was executed in that same year.

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