Where can I find historical journal articles by famous physicists?

[jjustinn]

I'm looking for sites with historical journal articles -- ideally in English, but if there's none available, I can settle for the original. Specifically, I'm looking for stuff by (in no particular order, and certainly not exclusively) e.g. Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, Schrödinger, Feynman, Stueckelberg, Majorana, ... I have found some, but I'm sure it's not an exhaustive list, so I'm hoping this thread will help me fill it out.

So, here's what I have so far:

- http://royalsocietypublishing.org: Amazing. For instance, most of Dirac's work freely available.

- http://oxfordjournals.org: also amazing. For whatever reason, they seemed to have an amazing selection of the Japanese guys (e.g. Tomonaga, Yukawa, ...)

- http://neo-classical-physics.info: this guy does original English translations; I want to give him a kiss.

- http://web.ihep.su/owa/dbserv/hw.fulltextlist: similar to the previous.

- http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/browse4: mostly French; found a ton of Stueckelberg from Helvetica

- http://gallica.bnf.fr: this one is a haystack, mostly French...but there are some gems -- the proceedings of the 1933 Solvay conference, some Stueckelberg, some Majorana...probably a lot more, but searching is a pain.

- (That user page at Princeton, which I won't link because the rest of the articles there are password-protected, so the good professor probably meant to protect these as well): Mostly experimental-physics articles; outside my main area of interest, but some interesting stuff.

- http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/: just found this doing my ore-post due-dilligence. Any site that has both Einstein and Kropotkin has to be good.

- http://www.trivialanomaly.com: another I just found from another physicsforums post. A lot of dead links, but looks promising.

- http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in[/URL]: digital library of India: Mostly Indian papers.

- [url]http://zfbb.thulb.uni-jena.de[/url]: Thuringia university library - digitized journal articles, especially Annalen der Physik

- [url]http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch[/url]: haystack w/ a few needles

A few that got me rather excited before I ran face-first into the pay-wall:

- journals.aps.org (though allegedly free from public libraries?)

- [url="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/currentdecade.html?decade=1930"]www.nature.com/nature/journal/currentdecade.html?decade=1930[/url]

And, finally, there's my nemesis: Springer. They seem to own the rights to an inordinate number of classics, and they also seem to be the stingiest of all.

So...when you want to find a paper, where so you go?

 

[jjustinn]

So...apparently I spoke too soon about how generous Oxford and RSPA were; today, most of the articles I grabbed last week (10/31 and prior) are now pay-walled again. I remembered this happening before, and it looks like all of the articles I have (younger than 70 years at least) from RSPA are from the month of October (2014 and 2011).

Not that 70 years after publication date is particularly onerous, but the October-behavior was definitely preferable.

 

[Danger]

Have you tried a brick-and-mortar library? You know, the only kind that existed when I was in school?

 

[jjustinn]

Have you tried a brick-and-mortar library? You know, the only kind that existed when I was in school?

I suppose that's a last-ditch, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency-type option. But the internet's hours are more convenient.

However, the public libraries I've seen (note: small sample) don't have academic journals. I do remember my old college library had a pretty nice selection of printed journals, but as an ex-student I've assumed I lost access to that floor.

 

[Danger]

I do remember my old college library had a pretty nice selection of printed journals, but as an ex-student I've assumed I lost access to that floor.

I don't know where you live or what the rules are. Even though I never graduated high-school, I was allowed as a professional writer to purchase (for a small fee like maybe $15/year) a library card to any university or technical institution in the province. That was for borrowing purposes; anyone here can enter any university library at any time to just read on-site. (During my last ICU stay, I discovered a tunnel between the basement of my ward and the Medical School library. I was so happy that I actually had to set the alarm on my watch to remind me that it was time to return for meals or to get a new oxygen tank.)