Historical Manuscripts Project
The pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding is a dynamic, constantly evolving life long quest. In fact, it is longer than any one lifetime, and therefore bigger than any one individual seeking its pursuit. What we know today is a reflection of what we knew yesterday and the day before. It builds on itself. This is at the core of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. In the course of this search there is an inherent beauty not just in the rewards of finding the answers, but in the struggle and enlightenment of the search itself. It is one of the fundamental things that make us human.
The collection of manuscripts reproduced here represent important historical and seminal works in areas of mathematics, physics, and neuroscience. This is the work from yesterday on which the foundation of today is built. Some of these papers are relatively recent, while some are much older. In a number of cases they are rare high-resolution PDF versions of the original manuscripts. But in all cases they reflect conceptually and technically ground breaking ideas and work. Human creativity, imagination, and ingenuity at its very best. Enjoy.
The incorrectness and weaknesses of a theory cause other minds to formulate the problems more exactly and in this way scientific progress is made.
Robert Barany, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1914
Top panel: Group picture of the attendees of the 1926 Solvay conference. Left panel: Emmy Noether at work. The woman who changed physics. Center panel: Albert Einstein's office a mere hours after he passed away, as he left it, April 18th 1955. See the story by Ralph Morse, Time Magazine photographer here. Right panel: Santiago Ramon y Cajal. The father of modern neuroscience.