The Physical Tourist

摘要

I provide a tour of Edinburgh focusing on famous contributors to the history of physics and related sciences, using them as a way to write about particular parts of Edinburgh. I proceed chronologically, from the seventeenth century to the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and on to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the notable individuals I discuss are John Napier (1550–1617), James Gregory (1638–1675), George Sinclair (ca. 1625–1696), Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746), Joseph Black (1728–1799), James Hutton (1726–1797), John James Waterston (1811–1883), William J. Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872), David Brewster (1781–1868), Peter Guthrie Tait (1831–1901), James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), Charles Glover Barkla (1877–1944), Max Born (1882–1970), Edward Victor Appleton (1892–1965), Charles T.R. Wilson (1869–1959), and Peter Higgs (b. 1929).