Drawing Theories Apart

Winner of the 2007 Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society.

Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the twentieth century. Introduced by the American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) soon after World War II as a means of simplifying lengthy calculations in quantum electrodynamics, they soon gained adherents in many branches of the discipline. Yet as new physicists adopted the tiny line drawings, they also adapted the diagrams and introduced their own interpretations. Drawing Theories Apart traces how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams—and how both the diagrams and their users were molded in the process.

Drawing on rich archival materials, interviews, and more than five hundred scientific articles from the period, Drawing Theories Apart uses the Feynman diagrams as a means to explore the development of American postwar physics. By focusing on the ways young physicists learned new calculational skills, David Kaiser frames his story around the crafting and stabilizing of the basic tools in the physicist's kit—thus offering the first book to follow the diagrams once they left Feynman's hands and entered the physics vernacular.

David Kaiser is associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and lecturer in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

— Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University

“Only a few people have the talent to write the history of theoretical physics. Only one or two can conceptualize and explain the elaboration of theory as a practical activity, which, like fine art, has its own competing traditions and conventions of representation. David Kaiser accomplishes all this and backs it up with a level of detailed scholarship that makes it totally convincing.”— Harry Collins, Cardiff University

“This book is a double delight. It is the best example so far of a new way of doing the history of science, not as an account of evolving theories, experiments, and instruments, but of diagrams. It is a story of how a generation of physicists came to think for themselves and to talk to others in a new way. It takes you inside their minds and their seminars. It is also a wonderful way to learn how Feynman diagrams work and what they mean—in effect, a super do-it-yourself manual.”— Ian Hacking, Collège de France, Paris

— A. I. Solomon, Contemporary Physics

— Gordon Kane, Science

— Bruce H.J. McKellar, Australian Physics

— Anouk Barberousse, International Studies in the Philsophy of Science

— Eugen Merzbacher, Physics Today

— Eugen Merzbacher, Physics

— British Journal of the History of Science

— Adrian Wuethrich, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics

— Gert Roepstorff, Zentralblatt Math