Physicist and philosopher — Ernst Mach (Brno/Chirlitz 1838 – Haar, Munich 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. He studied in Vienna and taught physics in Graz and Prague, and later philosophy in Vienna. In physics he worked on acoustics, optics and, above all, on the aerodynamics of bodies moving at high speed, studying the shock waves produced by supersonic projectiles: hence the ‘Mach number’, the ratio between velocity and the speed of sound. As a philosopher of science, with his radical empiricism and his critique of Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time, he deeply influenced the young Einstein and the birth of relativity. He was, however, hostile to the atomic hypothesis, which he regarded as a construction that could not be directly observed.
Curiosity
His ‘Mach principle’, according to which the inertia of bodies derives from the totality of the masses in the universe, inspired Einstein, who coined its name, even though he never managed to incorporate it fully into general relativity.
Theories and contributions
- Mach number — Ratio between the velocity of a body and the speed of sound in the medium: .
- Mach principle — The inertia of a body would be determined by the overall distribution of matter in the universe.
- Shock waves and Mach cones — Study of the pressure waves generated by bodies moving at supersonic speed.
Present in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.