Antedating of "Physicist"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> The most important scientific word-coinages of the 19th century were
> William Whewell's coinages of _scientist_ (1834) and _physicist_ (1840).
> It now appears that Whewell did not in fact coin the latter word.  A
> search on the Science Direct database yields the following:
>
> 1838 tr. M. V. Regnault in _Jrnl. Franklin Inst._ July 31  A great number
> of physicists have employed themselves during the last century, in the
> examination of the specific heats of elastic fluids.

I now see that this "antedating" was erroneous, because of a misdating on
the Science Direct database.  The citation above should in fact be dated
1853.

Fred Shapiro


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