An exuberant dual biography that integrates developments in quantum physics, cosmology and genetics since the 1920s with the...
Segrè (Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics, 2007, etc.) explores the extraordinary lives and scientific accomplishments of two far-from-ordinary men, Max Delbrück and George Gamow.
The author explains why he calls them “ordinary” geniuses, despite the fact that they “led two of the most important science revolutions of the twentieth century.” Both were big-picture scientists, quantum physicists unwilling to rest on their laurels and unafraid of mistakes. Just as Kepler's discovery of the elliptical orbit of planets awaited Newton's gravitational theory for its realization and Bohr's model of the atom, despite being in error, was the inspiration for quantum mechanics, so it was Delbrück's research into the origins of life that inspired the work of Crick and Watson and Gamow's effort to explain the origin of atoms that earned him the title of the father of modern cosmology. In fact, Segrè’s title appears to be ironic. He explains that their genius was ordinary only in comparison with the towering greats such as Einstein and Heisenberg. The author writes extensively about how Bohr supported and encouraged their work and organized fellowships for them so that they could participate in the stimulating atmosphere of his Copenhagen Institute in the formative stage of their careers, and how they sought to replicate that environment as teachers in America, where they immigrated on the eve of World War II. In the author's opinion, their “ordinary genius” was the result of qualities that we all can share—judgment, character, perseverance and willingness to think outside of the box—although he deplores the short-term practical goals that have come to dominate the scientific establishment in recent years.
An exuberant dual biography that integrates developments in quantum physics, cosmology and genetics since the 1920s with the lives of these two scientists.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02276-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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