In 1867 he took a chair of physics at Prague and in 1895 became professor of the history and theory of inductive science at Vienna. In 1901, he was appointed to the upper house of the Austrian parliament. His interests were extraordinarily wide: In physics he made contributions to acoustics, electricity, hydrodynamics, mechanics, optics, and thermodynamics, and in psychology to perception and aesthetics. William James, who met Mach in 1882, reported that he appeared to have read and thought about everything. At the start of the twentieth century, he and Henri Poincaré were the two outstanding popularizers of science in the world. Lenin's main philosophical work is an onslaught on Machian thought, which was highly regarded by Russian socialists who opposed Lenin. Albert Einstein's 1916 obituary of Mach includes this comment: "His direct joy in seeing and comprehending, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, was so overwhelming that in high old age he still stared at the world with the inquisitive eyes of a child in order to take simple delight in understanding the connection of things." On another occasion, Einstein (1949) praised Mach's "incorruptible skepticism."
Mach's Influence
Mach gave his name to three things in science.
This is a free page. This page contains 188 words. This
article contains 2,175 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Mach, Ernst (1838–1916) Access Pass.
