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Boris Mikhailovich Hessen (Russian:Бори́с Миха́йлович Ге́ссен), alsoGessen (16 August 1893,Elisavetgrad – 20 December 1936,Moscow),[1] was aSovietphysicist,philosopher andhistorian of science. He is most famous for his paper onNewton'sPrincipia which became foundational inhistoriography of science.
Boris Hessen was born to a Jewish family inElisavetgrad, in theKherson Governorate of theRussian Empire (nowKropyvnytskyi,Ukraine). He studiedphysics andnatural sciences at theUniversity of Edinburgh (1913—1914) together with hisgymnasium school friendIgor Tamm. He then went to study at theSt. Petersburg University (1914—1917). He enlisted in theRed Army in theRussian Civil War, joined theCommunist Party in 1919 and became a member of theRevolutionary Military Council (1919—1921) and worked at theParty School. He also continued his physics studies at various places eventually graduating from theInstitute of Red Professors inMoscow in 1928. In this year he was criticised byAlexander Maximov, who criticised him for being a "machist" and "right deviationist".[2]
After working in the institute for two more years, he became a physics professor and the chair of the physics department at theMoscow State University in 1931. In 1933 he was elected a member of theRussian Academy of Sciences.
In 1931, as part of aSoviet delegation led byN.I. Bukharin, Hessen delivered the paper"The Socio-Economic Roots of Newton's Principia" at theSecond International Congress of theHistory of Science inLondon. This work became foundational in thehistory of science and led to modern studies ofscientific revolutions andsociology of science.[3][4]
Hessen asserted thatIsaac Newton's most famous work was created to cater to the goals and desires of 17th century industry andeconomy. Hessen asserted that Newton's work was inspired by his economic status and context, that thePrincipia was the solution of technical problems of thebourgeoisie.
At that time in the Soviet Union, the work ofAlbert Einstein was under attack byCommunist Partyphilosophers; being supposedly motivated by bourgeois values, it was"bourgeois science",[5] and should henceforth be banned. (In many ways this attack was similar to theDeutsche Physik movement in Germany which occurred only a few years later.) Hessen's paper was a lobbying tactic: Party philosophers would not challenge the accuracy of Newton's theories, and to show them as being motivated by bourgeois concerns would, in Hessen's eyes, show that scientific validity could exist whatever the motivations were for undertaking it. However, there is little evidence that his paper had any effect in the internal Soviet philosophical battles over Einstein's work.
Despite its lack of impact in his home country, Hessen's thesis had a wide effect in Western history of science. Hessen's work has been dismissed as "vulgarMarxism".[6] However, its focus on the relationship between society and science was, in its time, seen as novel and inspiring. It was a challenge to the notion that the history of science was the history of individualgenius in action, the dominant view at least sinceWilliam Whewell'sHistory of the Inductive Sciences in 1837.
Few contemporary Western readers of Hessen took his paper at face value. His rigid connection between economy andknowledge was not accepted by a majority of historians. However, his assertion that a connection existed between the growth of knowledge and the art of war, and thatballistics played a central part of physics and Newton's world, was viewed with keen interest. In the shadow of the first war to employchemical weapons, and as the war machines were again gearing up in preparation for another world war, the role between science,technology, and warfare was becoming more interesting to scholars and scientists. Previous views of science as separate from the mundane or vulgar aspects of practical life — the disembodiment of the scientific mind from its context — were becoming less attractive than a view that science and scientists were increasingly embedded in the world in which they worked.
From 1934 to 1936 Hessen was a deputy director of thePhysics Institute in Moscow headed byS.I. Vavilov. On 22 August 1936 Hessen was arrested by theNKVD on charges of participation in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization and preparation of terrorist acts. He was secretly tried forterrorism by a military tribunal together with hisgymnasium school teacher Arkadij O. Apirin, who had been arrested two months earlier.
They were found guilty on 20 December 1936 and wereexecuted by shooting the same day. Hessen was buried in Moscow at the Donskoye Cemetery in a common grave. Hessen was posthumously expelled from theAcademy of Sciences of the Soviet Union by the General Assembly on April 29, 1938.
On 21 April 1956 both Apirin and Hessen wererehabilitated (posthumously exonerated) by decision of the All-Russian Military Commission. Hessen was posthumously reinstated by the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences on March 5, 1957
