This text focuses on the social and intellectual world of 19th-century German physics. In providing a biography of Hertz and his scientific community, Buchwald aims to reconstitute the tacit knowledge - the shared, unwritten assumptions, values and understandings - that shapes the work of science.
In this first detailed scientific biography of Heinrich Hertz, Jed Z. Buchwald examines Hertz's work on electromagnetic waves in the context of the social and intellectual world of nineteenth-century German physics. By situating Hertz's work within the larger scientific community of his day, Buchwald demonstrates how the shared, unwritten assumptions, values, and understandings of scientific practice can be recovered.
