Stephen George Brush (born February 12, 1935) is a historian of science whose career spanned the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
[1] Brush worked as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in the area of statistical mechanics and plasma physics for six years, 1959–1965.
[1] In 1968 Brush accepted a tenure track faculty appointment in history of science at the University of Maryland, College Park.
[1] During his time at the University of Maryland, Brush worked to eliminate discriminatory practices, recognize cultural diversity, and improve undergraduate education.
[1] In his role as Distinguished Professor, Dr. Brush was selected as a guest speaker for a special Mathematics lecture held on the College Park campus on November 7, 2003, which can be viewed on YouTube.
Later he became interested in natural selection and the continuing debates between proponents of evolution and creationism, and more generally how theories become accepted by the scientific community.
[10][circular reference] His work on the history of thermodynamics began with a series of essays in Annals of Science (1957/1958) on the kinetic theory of gases.
In 1964 Brush translated the lectures of Ludwig Boltzmann on Gas Theory into English, and edited several reprint volumes of classical works from statistical mechanics.
[10] During the 1980s and 1990s, Brush's research shifted in focus to study of theories of the origin of the Solar System, the Moon, and the Earth.
In addition to many journal articles, his work culminated in a three-volume series titled A History of Modern Planetary Physics.
Volume 1 (1965) The Nature of Gases and of Heat – excerpts and works by Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Daniel Bernoulli, George Gregory, Robert Mayer, James Prescott Joule, James Clerk Maxwell, Rudolf Clausius, Hermann von Helmholtz with commentary by Brush b.
Volume 2 (1966) Irreversible Processes – excerpts and works by Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Boltzmann, Henri Poincaré, Ernst Zermelo c. Volume 3 (1972), The Chapman-Enskog Theory of the transport equation of moderately dense gases (work of David Enskog, Sydney Chapman, David Hilbert) (2) The Kind of Motion We Call Heat – A History of the Kinetic Theory of Gases in the 19th Century.
North Holland 1976, 2 volumes, ISBN 978-0-444-11011-4 (3) Statistical Physics and the Atomic Theory of Matter from Boyle and Newton to Landau and Onsager.
MIT Press 1986, ISBN 978-0-262-07094-2 (6) With Elizabeth Garber & C. W. F. Everitt: Maxwell on Heat and Statistical Mechanics: on Avoiding All “Personal Inquiries“ of Molecules.
Iowa State University Press 1988, ISBN 978-0-8138-0883-3 (21) With Gerald Holton: Physics, the Human Adventure: from Copernicus to Einstein and beyond.
American Philosophical Society, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60618-993-1 (23) With Ariel Segal: Making 20th Century Science: How Theories Became Knowledge.