Going back to an old thread, I recently came across this lament that physicist's don't know their own history and an argument about why it matters: >Not long ago I had the opportunity to give a >colloquium on these and related matters at a >major university. Among the 50 or so physicists >in the audience, not one had read Einstein's >original papers, yet alone Poincare's. As I >said, physicists are notorious for taking >history on faith. Such insouciance, though, has >not stopped physicists from repeating for >several generations the usual platitudes about >the history of their field. One might make a >case that science is inherently >anhistorical--certainly recent editions of >undergraduate physics texts are entirely bereft >of meaningful history. But if the history of >science has any relevance to the doing of it, >surely it is to remind us that science is a >collective enterprise and to engender in us a >humble awareness that the landscape of science >would appear very different had the vast unrecognized >majority never existed. "Lost in Einstein's Shadow: Einstein gets the glory, but others were paving the way" by Tony Rothman American Scientist Online Volume: 94 Number: 2 Page: 112 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1511/2006.2.112 www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/49611 Kevin D. Hoover