Professors of Natural Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
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Physics in Perspective
Professors of Natural Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Thomas B. Greenslade Jr.* The introductory physics course taught in American College and Universities in the twentyfirst century is a descendent of the natural philosophy—later, physics—course that developed in these institutions in the nineteenth century. In the present paper, I discuss the backgrounds of a number of prominent professors of natural philosophy who taught these courses. These came, variously from experience as high-school teachers, engineers, and clergymen. Few of them planned to become faculty members, as contrasted to today’s professors who have rigorous educational and research training to prepare themselves for their task.
Key words: Natural philosophy; physics education; pedagogy; nineteenth century; teacher training.
The Nineteenth-Century American Professor of Natural Philosophy Students can learn subjects through self-study, but the presence of a guide to organize the material, set priorities, and answer questions lubricates and expedites the learning process. The reasons for using professors to teach college students have not changed much since the nineteenth century, but the professors themselves are much different today than they were in 1850. In this article, you will meet some representative nineteenth-century physics faculty members and see how their preparation and careers differ from ours.1 Professors of physics at American colleges and universities at the start of the twenty-first century are thoroughly prepared specialists. Not only have they had a complete a set of standard undergraduate physics courses, but they have also has taken two and often three years of basic graduate courses, which are almost the same for theoreticians and experimentalists across a wide range of research fields. After intensive thesis research, they then spend a good part of their careers teaching what they have learned. Their only experience with teaching is from personal experience; they have little formal knowledge of pedagogical techniques. Physics faculty members are usually able to teach all of the undergraduate physics courses, but are not generally prepared to teach in fields much beyond elementary mathematics and chemistry. The promise of research in physics is generally a condition for initial employment.
T. B. Greenslade
Phys. Perspect.
The professor of natural philosophy in the mid-nineteenth-century American college came from a far less-specialized background, and faced quite different expectations. College teaching was a small profession, whose members arrived by paths sufficiently different to make the anecdotal rather than the statistical treatment the more useful in most cases. One useful statistic is the small probability of finding more than one faculty member in natural philosophy at a given college. Of my study sample of nineteen New York and New England colleges, sixteen had only one faculty member teaching physics. In the small schools, the typical appointment was as ‘‘Professor of Mathematics a
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