Book reviews - James Joule: a biography

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<jats:p> Donald S.L. Cardwell, <jats:italic>James Joule: a biography</jats:italic> . Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1989. Pp. x + 333. £35.00. ISBN 0-7190-3025-0. Of all the distinguished British physicists from the nineteenth century the most neglected until now has been James Prescott Joule. Commemorated today by a plaque in Westminster Abbey and in the international unit of energy named after him, he has hitherto been denied any major biography. Yet it was Joule whose experiments pointed to a mechanical equivalent of heat and opened up a way to measure it. Leading to the dynamical theory of heat and to the establishment of thermodynamics, Joule’s researches also dealt a mortal blow to the old understanding of heat as some kind of a fluid, caloric. Until his time all opponents of <jats:italic>caloric</jats:italic> (with the possible exception of Humphry Davy) had been marginal figures, hovering on the fringe of the scientific establishment. For this alone (and he did much else) Joule is worthy to be remembered. He was a central figure in the history of modern physics. </jats:p>

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