Article
ID: CBB001251433

The Awarding of the Copley Medal and the “Discovery”of the Law of Conservation of Energy: Joule, Mayer and Helmholtz Revisited (2012)

unapi
Conservation of energy (physical concept) Physics Prizes; awards 19th century Germany Mayer, Julius Robert von Joule, James Prescott Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Royal Society (Great Britain). European Science Exchange Programme

This article analyses the awarding of the Royal Society's Copley Medal to James Prescott Joule (1870), Julius Robert Mayer (1871) and Hermann Helmholtz (1873) in the wake of the establishment of the law of conservation of energy during the 1850s and 1860s. It seeks to reconstruct the context in which the awards occurred, emphasizing at once a combination of individual scientific achievement, advocacy on behalf of Joule's supporters, nationalism, and the special role that Helmholtz played thanks to the strong social relationship that he had developed with the British scientific elite in the two decades before receiving his award, the last of the three. The award in turn strengthened that relationship, as the great subject of discussion in physics now gradually turned from thermodynamics to electromagnetism and to reaching practical agreements in electrical metrology between the British, the Germans and others.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001251433/

Similar Citations

Article Ricardo Lopes Coelho; (2014)
On the Concept of Energy: Eclecticism and Rationality (/isis/citation/CBB422366227/)

Book Kenneth L. Caneva; (2021)
Helmholtz and the Conservation of Energy: Contexts of Creation and Reception (/isis/citation/CBB993217041/)

Article Wegener, Daan; (2009)
Science and Internationalism in Germany: Helmholtz, Du Bois-Reymond and Their Critics (/isis/citation/CBB000952852/)

Article Kenneth L. Caneva; (2019)
Helmholtz, the Conservation of Force and the Conservation of Vis Viva (/isis/citation/CBB534439403/)

Article Cahan, David; (2012)
Helmholtz and the British Scientific Elite: From Force Conservation to Energy Conservation (/isis/citation/CBB001220431/)

Essay Review Ursula Klein; (2020)
Science, Industry, and the German Bildungsbürgertum (/isis/citation/CBB173266813/)

Article Pourprix, Bernard; (2007)
De la reconstitution de la physique allemande du XIXe siècle: Les exemples de Georg Simon Ohm et Hermann Helmholtz (/isis/citation/CBB000954360/)

Article Pesic, Peter; (2013)
Helmholtz, Riemann, and the Sirens: Sound, Color, and the “Problem of Space” (/isis/citation/CBB001320409/)

Chapter Cahan, David; (2005)
Hermann von Helmholtz und die Ausgestaltung der amerikanischen Physik im Gilded Age (/isis/citation/CBB001022592/)

Article Cahan, David; (2010)
Helmholtz in Gilded-Age America: The International Electrical Congress of 1893 and the Relations of Science and Technology (/isis/citation/CBB000953437/)

Thesis Pantalony, David Alexander; (2002)
Rudolph Koenig (1832--1901), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821--1894) and the birth of modern acoustics (/isis/citation/CBB001562537/)

Thesis Oldham, Kalil T. Swain; (2008)
The Doctrine of Description: Gustav Kirchhoff, Classical Physics, and the “Purpose of All Science” in 19th-Century Germany (/isis/citation/CBB001561193/)

Article Luca Guzzardi; (2014)
Energy, Metaphysics, and Space: Ernst Mach’s Interpretation of Energy Conservation as the Principle of Causality (/isis/citation/CBB745246152/)

Article Craik, Alex D. D.; (2013)
“Continuity and Change”: Representing Mass Conservation in Fluid Mechanics (/isis/citation/CBB001211054/)

Chapter Underwood, Ted; (2006)
How Did the Conservation of Energy Become “The Highest Law in All Science”? (/isis/citation/CBB001232435/)

Article Guedj, Muriel; (2006)
Du concept de travail vers celui d'énergie: L'apport de Thomson (/isis/citation/CBB000760016/)

Article Bohang Chen; (2024)
Entelechy and Energy: Reconsidering Hans Driesch’s Vitalism in The Science and Philosophy of the Organism (/isis/citation/CBB311286658/)

Article Henning Schmidgen; (2015)
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's “Second Note” on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations (/isis/citation/CBB627949969/)

Article Antonino Drago; (2021)
Joule’s Experiment as an Event Triggering a Formalization of a Baconian Science Till Up to an Alternative Theory to Newton’s One (/isis/citation/CBB678427289/)

Article Carmen Giunta; (2019)
Watt’s in a name? Units of power and energy (/isis/citation/CBB784542822/)

Authors & Contributors
Cahan, David L.
Caneva, Kenneth L.
Coelho, Ricardo Lopes
Craik, Alex D. D.
Drago, Antonino
Giunta, Carmen J.
Journals
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences
Science and Education
Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Foundations of Science
Publishers
University of Toronto
University of California, Berkeley
MIT Press
Concepts
Physics
Conservation of energy (physical concept)
Energy (physics)
Thermodynamics
Measurement
Acoustics
People
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von
Du Bois-Reymond, Emil Heinrich
Joule, James Prescott
Kelvin, William Thomson, Baron
Mayer, Julius Robert von
Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm von
Time Periods
19th century
17th century
18th century
20th century, early
Places
Germany
United States
Great Britain
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment

Creative Commons License REST API