welcome to the EPS History of Physics website

Message from the Chairman (Prof. Denis Weaire, until November 2007)

The committee is interested in all aspects of the history of physics, and all expressions of it (for example in plays and other literary works, and in outreach, as well as conventional meetings).
It strongly welcomes suggestions and initiatives from members of the society. It seeks to encourage them to commemorate their predecessors, to recover the lost history of the more minor figures that contributed to physics, to celebrate the achievements of our profession, and to draw lessons on science policy from its past successes and failures. It believes there is today a large opportunity to do so in ways that can attract the attention of the wider world.
It is dedicated in particular to fostering those insights that can be gained by examining past cooperation and competition of scientists within Europe. It therefore seeks to establish active collaboration with other like-minded associations and it already enjoys a fruitful relationship with the History of Physics Group of the Institute of Physics in London.

Thoughts of the Chairman (Dr. Peter Schuster, from November 2007)

To tell the truth, for me yesterday’s times are not yet born : they are still to happen. I cannot rest content with Newton, Maxwell, Boltzmann as historians believe they know them. I wish to meet them anew, to appreciate not just the historical facts of a physicist’s life but also something of how and why this or that scientist made his great discovery.
A conventional biography cannot teach us much about this, but the relevant historical documentation is certainly the basis from which to start: there are still some European countries left where collecting of such material remains to be done, before we can start to learn from it, and fulfill our duty to bring it both to the specialist and to the public.
Thus arises our primary wish, that, the National Physical Society or National Academy of Sciences of every member state of the European Union should set up its own group or section for the History of Physics (HoP). The physicists themselves will eventually assume the task to work up the national history of physics and help protect from harm or destruction the historical documents, instruments and equipment, once associated with their national heroes.