The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains thetheories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains chapters on other dimensions that have their place in any rounded history. These include the role of lecturing and textbooks in the communication of knowledge, the contribution of instrument-makers and instrument-making companies inproviding for the needs of both research and lecture demonstrations, and the growing importance of the many interfaces between academic physics, industry, and the military.

Jed Buchwald and Robert Fox: Introduction; Part I: Physics and the New Science; 1 John Heilbron: Was there a Scientific Revolution?; 2 Noel Swerdlow: Galileo's Mechanics of Natural Motion and Projectiles; 3 John Schuster: Cartesian Physics; 4 Anthony Turner: Physics and the Instrument-Makers, 1550-1700; 5 Eric Schliesser and Chris Smeenk: Newton's Principia; 6 Alan Shapiro: Newton's Optics; 7 Bertoloni Meli: Experimentation in the Physical Sciences of the 17th Century; 8 Niccolo Guicciardini: Mathematics and the New Sciences; Part II: The Long Eighteenth Century; 9 Giuliano Pancaldi: The Physics of Imponderable Fluids; 10 Larry Stewart: Physics on Show: Entertainment, Demonstration, and Research in the Eighteenth Century; 11 Anita McConnell: Instruments and Instrument-Makers, 1700-1850; 12 Sandro Caparrini, and Craig Fraser: Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century; 13 Robert Fox: Laplace and the Physics of Short-Range Forces; 14 Jed Buchwald: Electricity and Magnetism to Volta; Part III: Fashioning the Discipline: from Natural Philosophy to Physics; 15 Jed Buchwald: Optics in the Nineteenth Century; 16 Hasok Chang: Thermal Physics and Thermodynamics; 17 Crosbie Smith: Engineering Energy: Constructing a New Physics for Victorian Britain; 18 Friedrich Steinle: Electromagnetism and Field Physics; 19 Jed Buchwald: Electrodynamics from Thomson and Maxwell to Hertz; 20 Paolo Brenni: From Workshop to Factory: The evolution of Instrument Making Industry, 1850-1930; 21 Josep Simon: Physics Textbooks and Textbook Physics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; 22 Iwan Morus: Physics and Medicine; 23 Kathy Olesko: Physics and Metrology; Part IV: Modern Physics; 24 Graeme Gooday and Daniel Mitchell: Rethinking 'Classical Physics'; 25 Olivier Darrigol and Jurgen Renn: The Emergence of Statistical Mechanics; 26 Daniel Kennefick: Three and a Half Principles: The Origins of Modern Relativity Theory; 27 Suman Seth: Quantum Physics; 28 Terry Shinn: The Silicon Tide: Relations between Things Epistemic and Things of Function in the Semiconductor World; 29 Helge Kragh: Physics and Cosmology