astrolabe History of Science

Richard Staley

Assistant Professor, History of Science

Office: 7131 Social Science Building
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1393
Phone: 608-262-3978
Fax: 608-262-3984
Email: rastaley@wisc.edu
Photography of Richard Staley

Richard Staley (right) working with Wolfgang Engels (left), who has replicated C.T.R. Wilson's cloud chamber experiments at the University of Oldenburg in Germany.

Special interests and recent research:

I have broad-ranging interests in the history of physics in Europe and America during the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular research focus on the physics community circa 1900, the development of special relativity, and the interrelations between instruments and experiment.

Recent publications:

  • “Fog, Dust and Rising Air: Understanding Cloud Formation, Cloud Chambers, and the role of Meteorology in Cambridge Physics in the late 19th Century,” in James R. Fleming, Vladimir Jankovic and Deborah Coen, eds. Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate (New York: Science History Publications, 2006), pp. 93-113.
  • “Napier Shaw and the Invention of the Cloud Chamber,” in Liba Taub and Frances Willmoth, eds. The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and Interpretations, to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of R. S. Whipple’s Gift to the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 2006), pp. 367-401.
  • “Conspiracies of Proof and Diversity of Judgment in Astronomy and Physics: On Physicists’ Attempts to Time Light’s Wings and Solve Astronomy’s Noblest Problem,” Cahiers François Viète 11-12 (2007), 83-97.
  • “On the Co-Creation of Classical and Modern Physics,” Isis 96 (2005), 530-558.
  • “Travelling Light,” in Marie-Noelle Bourget, Christian Licoppe and H. Otto Sibum, eds. Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 241-272.
  • "On the Histories of Relativity: The Propagation and Elaboration of Relativity Theory in Participant Histories in Germany, 1905-1911," Isis 89 (1998), 263-299.