We discuss the unity of physics with a kind of nostalgia, for our field today is so patently diverse. We hear this diversity in the cacophony of our meeting halls, in the differing languages of theorists and experimenters, of rheologists and astrophysicists. The sheer numbers of physicists and of the papers we publish—one every few minutes—overwhelm us. Diversity has even been institutionalized: Our American Physical Society is now organized into a dozen disparate divisions, and physicists have organized many physics societies outside APS. One would expect one of the clearest expressions of the unity of physics to lie in the teaching of physics, but even that enterprise has its separate American Association of Physics Teachers. And didn't we establish the American Institute of Physics, of which APS is but one of ten members, because of the need for unity in physics?

Topics
Acoustic noise, Teaching, Astrophysicists, Physicists, Rheologists
1.
For a history of IUPAP see P. Fleury in Physics 50 Years Later, Natl. Acad Sci., Washington, DC (1973).
2.
L.
 
Lederman
,
Am. J. Phys.
 
54
,
594
(
1986
).
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For a very learned and philosophical article on “The unity of physics,” see E. Amaldi in Physics 50 Years Later, Natl. Acad. Sci., Washington, DC (1973).
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© 1986 American Institute of Physics.
1986
American Institute of Physics
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