Ernst Mach in Prague

Abstract

When reviewing Ernst Mach’s life and work one will soon realize what an important part Prague played in his biography. The near three decades that Mach spent in this city on the Moldau river were full of highlights and turning points that mark the 78 years of his lifespan. This important period in the scholar’s life also allows us to draw conclusions about his personality as well as his scientific and social activities. It was here in Prague where Mach contributed so much to modern ballistics and instantaneous photography, perhaps his most important experimental work in physics which later made his name famous under the expressions “Mach 1”, “Mach 2”, etc.. It was also in Prague that Mach did much of his work in psychology and physiology, completing a series of papers on an unusual inhibitory phenomenon of sensory perception called “Mach Bands” as well as discovering a principal function of the inner ear and partly explaining vertigo or dizziness in human beings in a psycho-physical way. In addition to all that, he began to deal intensely with problems concerning the theory of cognition and the history of physics, reviewing them in a philosophical manner that was marked by an empirical approach, which helped make him one of the co-founders of the movement subsequently called “Empiriocriticism”. The majority of Mach’s publications - some 150 - were written in Prague. In addition to that, many of his manuscripts for books - such as Beiträge zur Dopplerschen Theorie, Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, his textbooks of physics, and his most popular book Die Mechanik - went from his Prague desk to the typesetter, gradually aroused interest, and largely founded the author’s international reputation.¹

¹ See J. Thiele, “Ernst Mach-Bibliographie”, Centaurus, 8 (1963), 189-237.