Ernst Mach : His Life, Work, and Influence

Ex-library. Library labels, stamps and markings. Dust-jacket has been trimmed slightly along long edge, and is 5mm shorter than the book. Some brown paper reinforcement on reverse side of dust-jacket. Dust-jacket protected in archival mylar cover.; [2 (blank)], xx, 414 pages + portrait frontispiece. Dark blue cloth boards with gilt lettering and rule on spine. Page dimensions: 233 x 154mm. Biography of the physicist. "The Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838-1916) exerted a great influence on intellectual leaders and movements during this [20th] century. As Dr. Blackmore's wide-ranging biography emphasizes, Mach had personal or intellectual ties to a large number of extremely diverse major figures, from Planck to Lenin and from Einstein to Wittgenstein. Though perhaps best known for his work on shock waves (Mach numbers), Mach made significant contributions in many field. His attack on Newton's conceptss of mass, space, time, and motion influenced Einstein; he made the first scientific investigation of Gestalt phenomena (1861); he discovered optical inhibitory impressions (1865), now called Mach bands; and he was the first to relate dizziniess and "motor sensations" to the inertial movement of liquid in part of the inner ear (1873). His philosophical ideas influenced the "neutral monism" of William James and Bertrand Russell and had a decisive impact on the development of the "Vienna Circle" and logical positivism. And he is remembered as an accomplished historian of science for his book son the development of mechanics, heat, and optics into scienticific disciplines, and as an educator for his secondary-school physics textbook and articles on the philosophy of education." - from dust-jacket blurb.…