Initial Conditions: A Physics History Podcast
Initial conditions provide the context in which physics happens. Likewise, in Initial Conditions: a Physics History Podcast, we provide the context in which physical discoveries happened. We dive into the collections of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives at the American Institute of Physics to uncover the unexpected stories behind the physics we know. Through these stories, we hope to challenge the conventional history of what it means to be a physicist.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 46 minutes
- Episodes
- 15
- Years Active
- 2022
Bonus: Initial Conditions Off Mic
Justin, Maura, and Allison reflect on the creation of Initial Conditions and speak to some of the other staff at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives and the Center for History of Physics. They share th…
Bonus: Live from PhysCon!
In this episode, Justin and Maura interview speakers and students who attended the 2022 Society for Physics Students Physics Congress. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell shares the story of her 1967 discovery…
Hawai'i and the Thirty Meter Telescope
Featuring a discussion with experts Samantha Thompson and Kalewa Correa from the Smithsonian Institution, this episode is about the history of Hawai’i and the controversy surrounding the Thirty Meter…
The Legacy of Ptolemy’s Almagest
This episode dives into the story of the oldest book in NBLA’s Wenner Collection: a 1528 Latin translation of the Almagest. Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, originally titled Mathēmatikē Syntaxis…
The Newton You Didn't Know
Apart from his publications on gravity and optics, Newton was also a biblical scholar, religious mystic, and alchemist. In fact, a great deal of his work focuses on subjects that modern audiences mig…
The Unexpected Hero of Light
This is the story of how a Pittsburgh steel worker became the lensmaker behind some of the most important experiments of 19th century physics. John Brashear fell in love with the night sky as a kid i…
An Interview with Dr. Ronald Mickens
In June, after several technical mishaps, I flew down to Atlanta, Georgia, to meet Dr. Ronald Mickens and talk about his research on the history of African American physicists. In this episode, you’l…
The African American Presence in Physics
Based on the Ronald E. Mickens collection, this episode describes the history of the community of Black physicists in the United States. In 1999 the American Physical Society celebrated its centennia…
Historical Romance and LGBTQ+ Representation
This episode will tell the stories of Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. It features an interview with Olivia Waite, who combines the two historic women in the protagonist of her regency, sapphic…
Was Einstein Wrong??
What is pseudoscience? The answer to that question is more difficult than you might think. In trying to answer the question, we can learn a lot more about what science is, how it is practiced, and wh…
Quantum Counterculture
Inspired by David Kaiser's 2011 book, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, this episode will cover the discomfort many physicists experienced while grappl…
Energy Crises and Climate Change in the 1970s
This episode describes efforts undertaken by the Department of Energy in the late 1970s to study the environmental, economic, and social consequences of anthropogenic climate change. In the early 197…
Enter the Anthropocene: Climate Science in the Early 20th Century
In this episode we discuss the efforts of three scientists–Svante Arrhenius, Guy Callendar, and Charles David Keeling–to figure out exactly what fossil fuel emissions might be doing to the atmospher…
Eunice Foote: A Once Forgotten Climate Science Pioneer
Perhaps because she was a woman, or perhaps because she was American, Eunice Foote did not receive credit for her 1856 discovery of the heat-absorbing properties of carbon dioxide and water vapor. In…