| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 238 words from this article are provided below; about 330 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Science at the American Frontier: A Biography of DeWitt Bristol Brace. By David Cahan and M. Eugene Rudd. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. xvi, 209 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8032-1508-8.)

The historian David Cahan and the physicist M. Eugene Rudd have contributed a scientific biography of DeWitt Bristol Brace (1859–1905), a relatively unknown American physicist whose life nonetheless provides valuable insight concerning the growth of American science during the Gilded Age. Following an undergraduate career at Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brace studied physics at Johns Hopkins University before undertaking advanced studies at the University of Berlin. Study at Hopkins and Berlin enabled Brace to associate with such eminent figures as Henry A. Rowland, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Gustav Kirchhoff. His dissertation on the Faraday effect (the effect of a magnetic field on polarized light) led to his Ph.D. from Berlin in 1885 and an important publication in Annalen der Physik the same year. After teaching briefly at the University of Michigan, Brace joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska in 1887. During the next eighteen years, he established a separate physics department and coordinated its growth, oversaw the establishment of a strong research tradition in the department, and pursued his own research in light and optics. By the time of his death, Brace and the physics department he led were well known among physicists in the United States and Europe. . . .

There are about 330 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.