Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857–94)

List of works

	Hertz, H.R. (1892) Untersuchungen über die Ausbreitung der Electrischen Kraft, Leipzig: Barth; Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, Leipzig: Barth, 1894. (See Electric Waves, translated by D.E. Jones, London: Macmillan, 1893. Reprinted in 1962, New York: Dover. The main papers on electromagnetic waves. The introduction is an autobiographical account of their discovery, followed by a searching analysis of Maxwell’s theory.)
	Hertz, H.R. (1894) Die Principien der Mechanik, Leipzig: Barth; Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, Leipzig: Barth, 1894. (See The Principles of Mechanics, translated by D.E. Jones and J.T. Walley, London: Macmillan, 1899. Reprinted in 1956, New York: Dover. The introduction is Hertz’s main contribution to philosophy.)
	Hertz, H.R. (1895) Schriften vermischten Inhalts, Leipzig: Barth; Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, Leipzig: Barth, 1896. (See Miscellaneous Papers, translated by D.E. Jones and G.A. Schott, London: Macmillan, 1896.)
	Hertz, H.R. (1927) Erinnerungen, briefe, tagbücher, ed. J. Hertz, Leipzig: Akademische verlagsgesellschaft; repr. M. Hertz and C. Süsskind (eds) Heinrich Hertz: Memoirs, Letters, Diaries, San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Press, 1977, 2nd edn, enlarged. (Biographical material, much with scientific content, prepared by one of Hertz’s daughters. The 1977 edition contains additional material and has a parallel text translation with German and English on facing pages.)
	Hertz, H.G. and Doncel, M. (1995–6) ‘Heinrich Hertz’s Laboratory Notes of 1887’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 45: 149–270. (A facsimile, with transcription and translation, of newly discovered notes from a key period in Hertz’s experiments on electromagnetic waves.)
	Mulligan, J. (1994) Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857–94): A Collection of Articles and Addresses, New York: Garland. (English versions of most of Hertz’s important papers, including the introductions to Electric Waves and Principles of Mechanics, and remarks on Hertz by Helmholtz, Planck and others.)

References and further reading

With the exception of the first two, which are written for people already familiar with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, these items presuppose some knowledge of basic physics, but no special philosophical background.

	Barker, P. (1979) ‘Untangling the Net Metaphor’, Philosophy Research Archives 5: 184–199. (Relates Wittgenstein’s account of science, Tractatus 6.3, to Hertz’s discussion of mechanics.)
	Barker, P. (1980) ‘Hertz and Wittgenstein’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 11: 243–256. (Establishes connections between Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.)
	Buchwald, J.Z. (1994) The Creation of Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and Electric Waves, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (An important historical study of Hertz.)
	Hamilton, K. (1994) Hertz and Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Significance of Wittgenstein’s Scientific Training, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, IN. (Presents new historical information about Wittgenstein in a full-length study of his debt to Hertz.)
	Jungnickel, C. and McCormmach, R. (1986) Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, vol. 1, The Torch of Mathematics, 1800–1870, vol. 2, The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870–1925, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Presents the theoretical, experimental and institutional development of German physics. Volume 1 ends with Helmholtz’s early researches. Volume 2 covers the whole career of Hertz, and the development of physics up to the founding of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.)
	McCormmach, R. (1983) Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, New York: Avon Books. (A recreation of the world of physics at the time of Hertz, in the form of a short novel.)