A sophisticated overview of modern physics, including more of Einstein’s missteps than readers usually encounter.
A close examination of Einstein’s work, emphasizing the errors and wrong turns that even colleagues overlooked.
Ohanian, a former editor of the American Journal of Physics, proceeds through the years, rarely missing a paper, speech, interview or controversy. The author covers many fields, because Einstein made not one but several breakthrough discoveries; his Nobel, in fact, was for the photoelectric effect, not relativity. Einstein admitted that mathematics was not his strong suit, but beyond the torrent of errors in that area, Ohanian also finds mistakes in physical assumptions that range from oversimplification to outright nuttiness. Max Planck, working as a journal editor, read the unknown Einstein’s revolutionary 1905 paper on special relativity and found a major error in the discussion of relativistic mass. Recognizing the paper’s importance, Planck approved it and later worked out a correct recalculation for which he has never received credit. Because of Einstein’s fame, everyone believes he discovered the equation linking mass to energy. In fact, other physicists knew of it for years, and his 1905 proof was incomplete; once Max Von Laue produced a complete proof in 1911, Einstein adopted it. Ohanian emphasizes two absolute laws of research. One: If a scientist makes a brilliant discovery, everyone forgives mistakes he made along the way. Two: If he becomes a scientific superstar, he gets credit for everything in his field. Thus Einstein gets credit for everything connected with relativity, including earlier discoveries and those of colleagues who improved his work. Dennis Overbye’s Einstein in Love (2000) gives the best popular account of his science, while Walter Isaacson’s bestselling Einstein (2007) is the best on his life. Ohanion’s book delves more deeply into physics and into Einstein’s thought processes, so readers will have to pay close attention.
A sophisticated overview of modern physics, including more of Einstein’s missteps than readers usually encounter.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06293-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
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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