The Project Gutenberg eBook, The New Physics and Its Evolution, by Lucien
Poincare

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Title: The New Physics and Its Evolution

Author: Lucien Poincare

Release Date: February 28, 2005 [eBook #15207]

Language: En

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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EVOLUTION***

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The International Scientific Series

THE NEW PHYSICS AND ITS EVOLUTION

by

LUCIEN POINCARE
Inspecteur-General de l'Instruction Publique

Being the Authorized Translation of _LA PHYSIQUE MODERNE, SON EVOLUTION_

New York
D. Appleton and Company

1909

Prefatory Note

M. Lucien Poincare is one of the distinguished family of
mathematicians which has during the last few years given a
Minister of Finance to the Republic and a President to the
Academie des Sciences. He is also one of the nineteen
Inspectors-General of Public Instruction who are charged with the
duty of visiting the different universities and _lycees_ in
France and of reporting upon the state of the studies there
pursued. Hence he is in an excellent position to appreciate at
its proper value the extraordinary change which has lately
revolutionized physical science, while his official position has
kept him aloof from the controversies aroused by the discovery of
radium and by recent speculations on the constitution of matter.

M. Poincare's object and method in writing the book are
sufficiently explained in the preface which follows; but it may
be remarked that the best of methods has its defects, and the
excessive condensation which has alone made it possible to
include the last decade's discoveries in physical science within
a compass of some 300 pages has, perhaps, made the facts here
noted assimilable with difficulty by the untrained reader. To
remedy this as far as possible, I have prefixed to the present
translation a table of contents so extended as to form a fairly
complete digest of the book, while full indexes of authors and
subjects have also been added. The few notes necessary either for
be