A radiant love letter to science from a scientist with a poet’s soul.
Geophysicist Green (Interdisciplinary Studies/Miami Univ.; Water, Ice and Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes, 2008, etc.) has written a book that defies simple categorization—part memoir of a life in science, part history of science since Copernicus, part essay on the relationship of place to intellectual discovery. The title refers to a red herring of a mystery Green sets up but doesn’t solve: Why did the brilliant, visionary Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann kill himself while on a seaside vacation on the Adriatic? Boltzmann, who devised the formula for entropy, is a recurring character, a sort of angel of death, but the main character is Green, who was inspired to write this book by a question his daughter posed him while they were collecting samples from the Dry Lakes of Antarctica: “Why did you decide to work down here, Dad?” He gave her the short answer but was dissatisfied, stirred to dig deeper, taking as the real question, why science? Green retraces his steps from a boyhood in 1950s Pittsburgh spent playing baseball and experimenting with model rockets. Almost despite himself, he discovered a talent and fascination for chemistry at his Catholic high school, and he was encouraged by the nuns to consider a career in the field. He eventually moved from chemistry to geophysics and, ultimately, to his beloved McMurdo Base in Antarctica. As he revisits the cities where his career took him, he brings to life what it is about the scientific worldview that riveted him to his eccentric path. Green is an exquisite writer, and his fierce focus and mastery of style are reminiscent of the biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas.
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-934137-35-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
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