"Being A Map of Physics" by Bernard H. Porter

"This map is the culmination of a six-year-long labor of love by noted physicist, visual artist, poet, and peace activist Bernard H. Porter. Porter began compiling the historical data upon which the map is based in 1932 while a fellow in radioactive research at Brown University. He then took most of the summer of 1933, working out of his parent’s home in Houlton, Maine, to compose the map’s striking visuals. The following years were spent circulating the map among prominent physicists and historians of science to verify its accuracy. The end result is a rich geography of a scientific field, one that uses mapping conventions to make understandable the way ideas move and develop over time. Ambitious in scope, the map traces the history of physics from the 6th century B.C. to the present day. Key theoretical starting points such as ‘Mechanics,’ ‘Sound,’ ‘and Light’ appear as water sources from which streams of thought emerge. Located alongside these rivers are “villages” representing figures like Isaac Newton, Alessandro Volta, Werner Heisenberg, and other major contributors to the development of physics. Surrounding it all is the map’s border, which is decorated with 24 diagrams that frequently appear in the work of physicists" (http://www.scimaps.org/mapdetail/being_a_map_of_physi_171, accessed 10-2020).