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Young Ernst Mach
Mach was born in then Moravia, which was part of the Austrian Empire now known as Brno in the Czech Republic. His father was a tutor for a noble family, and served as the primary educator for Ernst throughout his childhood and into his early teens. He attended secondary schools in Germany at the University of Vienna where he studied physics and medical physiology, finally earning his doctorate in physics. in 1860 -
Professor Mach
Mach taught and held many titles at various universities throughout Europe. He spent the lions share of his time (28 years) as the chair of Experimental Physics at the Charles University, Prague -
Mach What?
Ernst Mach correctly formulated and tested the sound effects observed during supersonic flight of a given projectile. In 1887 he and an associate photographed the shock-waves around a supersonic bullet (depicted in the attached photograph). The study was published in their paper MLA: Mach, Ernst; Salcher, Peter (1887). "Photographische Fixirung der durch Projectile in der Luft eingeleiteten Vorgänge" Sitzungsber. Kaiserl. Akad. Wiss., Wien, Math.-Naturwiss. 764–780. Retrieved 24 October 2015 -
A New Chair!
Directly relating to what we're studying in this course, in 1895 Mach moved back to Vienna to chair the studies of newly created history and philosophy of the inductive sciences, or historico-philosophical studies. During his brief tenure in Vienna, Mach operated under a paradigm of phenomenalistic philosophy of science, in which the conditional possibility of perceiving was key in the observation of objects in the natural world. This method was influential during the 19th and 20th centuries. -
Machian Physics
Ernst Mach died in 1919, he left a lasting legacy on the and attributed to many principles to physical theorisation mainly:
1:It should be based entirely on directly observable phenomena.
2:It should completely eschew absolute space and time in favor of relative motion
3:Any phenomena that would seem attributable to absolute space and time should instead be seen as emerging from the large scale distribution of matter in the universe.
