Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics: Physics Textbooks Don't Always Tell the Truth

Anyone who studies the history of physics quickly realizes that the history of physics presented in physics textbooks is often inaccurate. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The purpose of textbooks is to help students learn physics. An inaccurate history may serve a pedagogical purpose. It may help to explain concepts more clearly than the actual history. I believe, however, that it is important for those of us who teach physics to know the accurate history. In this talk I will discuss two episodes from the history of modern physics, Millikan's experiments on the photoelectric effect and the Ellis-Wooster experiment on the energy spectrum in $\beta $ decay. Everyone knows that Millikan's work established the photon theory of light. The problem is that what everyone knows is wrong. The Ellis-Wooster experiment, on the other hand, is rarely discussed in physics texts, but it should be. In this talk I will present a more accurate history of these experiments.