FHP Pais Award Talk: Physics, History, and the History of Physics

This first Abraham Pais Lecture will begin with the story of my own transformation from theoretical physicist to historian of physics. I will go on by illustrating my historian’s approach through a discussion of the issues raised by Einstein’s first paper of 1905; this is the paper physicists refer to so often – and so inadequately -- as his ``paper on the photoelectric effect.'' The lecture will conclude with a few, brief remarks on how the history of physics is essentially like any other sort of history.