Cohesion: A Scientific History of Intermolecular Forces in Bloomington, MN

Why does matter stick together? Why do gases condense to liquids, and liquids to solids? This book is a detailed historical account of how some of the leading scientists of the past three centuries have tried to answer these questions. Organized into four broad periods of advances in understanding, the first three are associated with Newton, Laplace and van der Waals, while the fourth gives an account of the successful use in the twentieth century of quantum and statistical mechanics to resolve most of the remaining problems.