Uneasy Genius: The Life And Work Of Pierre Duhem

Zusatztext

A hundred years have now gone by since in the midsummer of 1882 Pierre Duhem, a graduate of College Stanislas, completed with brilliant success his entrance exams to the Ecole Normale Superieure and embarked on his career as a theoretical physicist. His father, a textile salesman, hoped that Hierre would pursue a career in business, one of the few professional fields where perhaps he would not have succeeded. Not that young Duhem lacked sense for the practical. He could have easily made a name for himself as an artist had he developed professionally his skill to draw portraits and landscapes. His ability to make a point and his readiness to join in a debate, could have earned him fame as a lawyer. A potential actor was in sight when he entertained friends with mimicry. That as a student of physics he entered and stayed first in his class at the Ecole Normale, did not thwart his talents for the life sciences. No less a biologist than Pasteur tried to obtain Duhem for assistant. His command of Greek and Latin would have secured him a career as a classicist. He was a Frenchman, not to be met too often, whose rightful ad­ miration for and mastery of his native tongue, did not prove a barrier to the major modern languages. As one who taught himself the complex art of medieval paleo­ graphy, he could easily have mastered the many auxiliary sciences needed by a consummate historian.

Autorenportrait

Stanley L. Jaki, a Hungarian-born Catholic priest of the Benedictine Order, is Distinguished Professor at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Yersey. With doctorates in theology and physics, he has for the past twenty-five years specialized in the history and philosophy of science. The author of twenty books and over seventy articles, he has served as Gifford Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and as Fremantle Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, Membre correspondant of the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Bordeaux, he is the recipient of the Lecomte du Noüy Prize for 1970 and of the Templeton Prize for 1987.

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