Article ID: CBB000651393

Spreading the Tools of Theory: Feynman Diagrams in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union (2004)

unapi

Historians and sociologists have highlighted the importance of skills, local practices and material culture in their studies of experimental sciences. This paper argues that the acquisition and transfer of skills in theoretical sciences should be understood in similar terms. Using the example of Feynman diagrams - first introduced by the US theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1948 as an aid for making certain kinds of calculations - we study how physicists in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union learned how to use the new tools and put them to work. Something about the diagrammatic tools could be learned from written instructions alone, at a distance from those physicists already `in the know', although this type of transfer proved to be very difficult, slow, and rare. The rate at which new physicists began to use the diagrams in various settings, and the types of uses to which the diagrams were put, reveal the interplay between geopolitics, personal communication, and pedagogical infrastructures in shaping how paper tools spread.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000651393/

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Authors & Contributors
Kaiser, David Isaac
Wüthrich, Adrian
Wright, Aaron Sidney
Mogorovich, Annalisa
Rotter, Andrew Jon
Meynell, Letitia Mercia
Concepts
Physics
Visual representation; visual communication
Diagrams
Theoretical physics
Atomic, nuclear, and particle physics
Quantum mechanics
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
Renaissance
17th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Japan
Russia
Germany
France
Institutions
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
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