Lectures on History of Science – Lecture 21: Development of the theory and application of classical mechanics before 20th century

Summary

This lecture is a recapitulation of the development of classical mechanics with respect to its formal theory as well as the further application in multi-degree-of-freedom systems during the period between the publishing of Newton’s Principia and the emergence of Relativity theory and quantum theory in the early stage of 20^th century. In general, the development comprises the emergence of two equivalent statement – Lagrange’s and Hamilton’s mechanics- and their application in multi-DOF systems such as gas-liquid-solid continuum. Limited by the length of the lecture, we will include the contributions of Bernoulli, Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs to gas kinetics and statistical mechanics along with the work made by Euler, Navier and Stokes on fluid mechanics.