Reviews (5)

Al Einstein only Autobiography...so called "Obituary"
Albert Einstein lived the last thirty years of his life in the United States and passed away in 1955 in New Jersey.He wrote three great papers in 1905 at the age of 26.

This book is the only thing ever coming close to an autobiography that Einstein ever wrote.Needless to say, offers of money and prizes were offered to him, unlike the millions offered to ex-U.S. presidents to write a book. He never accepted any of these offers.The only offer he accepted was from Professor Schilpp to write an intellectual autobiography of himself.

Incredible and Timeless is only ways to describe this book.Einstein labels as his "obituary", for a man who was considered the "Person of the Century" by Time Magazine.

Friends, his own "obituary" in his own hand is a worthy read and cost of the book.It is nota "personal" life but his "thinking" on science and of course on physics. We all know the two great theories of physical was created in the early 20th. century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein alone created relativity and was also one of the founders of the quantum theory. We also know now that Einstein never accepted quantum theory till the end.

Here, Einstein fully describes the failure of classical mechanics and the rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity and of the quanta.

Of note, Einstein's"Evolution of Physics" is a general lay discussion of the same issues. This is Einstein's technical discussion of the evolution of physics.

"When I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality"This comment alone is worth price of the book.

The essays sections includes writing of the great scientist of the 20th century.We only read about them in textbook but here they are in their own words: Niels Bohr, Louis De Broglie, Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, Kurt Godel, Hans Reichenbach and Wolfgang Pauli.One only sees their picture in physics textbooks.

This book really belongs in all who are professional scientists or are interested in science.Unlike Newton "Principia" or Darwin's "The Origin of Species" Einstein papers are scattered everyone.This is the only definitive book on Einstein by Einstein himself.

Moreover, it is a scholarly and scientific book, so it should last for a long time and of value to all future generations.

Al Einstein only Autobiography...so called "Obituary"
Albert Einstein lived the last thirty years of his life in the United States and passed away in 1955 in New Jersey.He wrote three great papers in 1905 at the age of 26.

This book is the only thing ever coming close to an autobiography that Einstein ever wrote.Needless to say, offers of money and prizes were offered to him, unlike the millions offered to ex-U.S. presidents to write a book. He never accepted any of these offers.The only offer he accepted was from Professor Schilpp to write an intellectual autobiography of himself.

Incredible and Timeless is only ways to describe this book.Einstein labels as his "obituary", for a man who was considered the "Person of the Century" by Time Magazine.

Friends, his own "obituary" in his own hand is a worthy read and cost of the book.It is nota "personal" life but his "thinking" on science and of course on physics. We all know the two great theories of physical was created in the early 20th. century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein alone created relativity and was also one of the founders of the quantum theory. We also know now that Einstein never accepted quantum theory till the end.

Here, Einstein fully describes the failure of classical mechanics and the rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity and of the quanta.

Of note, Einstein's"Evolution of Physics" is a general lay discussion of the same issues. This is Einstein's technical discussion of the evolution of physics.

"When I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality"This comment alone is worth price of the book.

The essays sections includes writing of the great scientist of the 20th century.We only read about them in textbook but here they are in their own words: Niels Bohr, Louis De Broglie, Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, Kurt Godel, Hans Reichenbach and Wolfgang Pauli.One only sees their picture in physics textbooks.

This book really belongs in all who are professional scientists or are interested in science.Unlike Newton "Principia" or Darwin's "The Origin of Species" Einstein papers are scattered everyone.This is the only definitive book on Einstein by Einstein himself.

Moreover, it is a scholarly and scientific book, so it should last for a long time and of value to all future generations.

Editorial Review

Reviews (7)

Science & History
For those of us hooked on science biographies, Mr. Mahon's take on Maxwell is an engaging work.The author weaves autobiographical detail smoothly into a story of critically important scientific discoveries (field theory, color theory).Like Kepler and Galileo before him, Maxwell saw no contradiction between science and faith.And while he was respected in his day, many of his most important theories were not proven until long after his death.Einstein credited Maxwell with laying the groundwork for his own seminal work.

The history of an outstanding simple man...James Maxwell
When I started reading this book, I seen something similar to the history of one of the greatest mathematicians, Euler.
Euler and Maxwell were probably similar in several ways, they were true genius but still kept in contact with normal people and enjoyed life. Their fame is not proportional to their contributions, Maxwell and Euler are in the same category as men like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci.

Basil Mahon has done a great job of telling Maxwell life and presenting his contributions to science in a way that a lay person can understand. The great thing is that he presents the methods or models used by Maxwell to reach his conclusions. It makes easier for us to understand the thought process of a genius.

Clearly Basil Mahon admired his subject, and by extension the reader will get involved.

Editorial Review

As a schoolbook figure, Isaac Newton is most often pictured sitting under an apple tree, about to discover the secrets of gravity. In this short biography, James Gleick reveals the life of a man whose contributions to science and math included far more than the laws of motion for which he is generally famous. Gleick's always-accessible style is hampered somewhat by the need to describe Newton's esoteric thinking processes. After all, the man invented calculus. But readers who stick with the book will discover the amazing story of a scientist obsessively determined to find out how things worked. Working alone, thinking alone, and experimenting alone, Newton often resorted to strange methods, as when he risked his sight to find out how the eye processed images:

.... Newton, experimental philosopher, slid a bodkin into his eye socket between eyeball and bone. He pressed with the tip until he saw 'severall white darke & coloured circles'.... Almost as recklessly, he stared with one eye at the sun, reflected in a looking glass, for as long as he could bear.

Reviews (2)

Paul Dirac - The man and his work
We were ourselves participating in the inauguration of the Paul Dirac memorial in Westminster Abbey. Especially the speeches of Stephan Hawking and Abraham Pais were very touching as they did not only touch Dirac's workbut also his personality and life. He was a very complex person and a greatphysicist. This book reflects that more than others about him.

An insightful recollection of a nearly invisible genius.
After missing the first collection of essays on this brilliant recluse published soon after his death, Ipicked up the present version as soon as I was able. It did not disappoint.

The book is a collection of four lectures given in the subject's honor in 1995 on the tenth anniversary ofhis death. The final lecture and the latter part of the third are highlymathematical and technical and clearly intended for a professionalaudience.

But for me, the first lecture by Abraham Pais is worth thepurchase price alone.Pais was not only a contemporary physicist, but alsoa close friend and as close to a confidant as was possible with such areticent man.

Through Pais' eyes, we see a mathematician turned physicistwho was very different from the man to whom Dirac is most frequentlycompared, Albert Einstein.Einstein was a physicist first, mathematiciansecond.Dirac was exactly the opposite.Einstein became a social andpolitical critic, Dirac never strayed far from his study.The two weresimilar in that both viewed mathematical beauty as primary and both hatedthe modern remake of quantum mechanics (after the initial theory) for verysimilar reasons.This last point was interesting as Dirac was the firstone to combine all his contemporaries' work on this improved quantumphysics into a formal mathematical structure.His resulting equation,called naturally the Dirac equation, is classic Dirac, short and sweet. Itcombined Einsteinian relativity with the new quantum theory and Diracconsidered the result to govern most of physics and all of chemistry. Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist, says in hisintroductory memorial address to the book, "If Dirac had patented theequation ... he would have become one of the richest men in the world.Every television set or computer would have paid him royalties."For thiswork, Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with German physicist ErwinSchroedinger.One unexpected consequence of this work was a mathematicalconclusion that defined a "negative energy" matter (aka antimatter)solution. Simply put, he had discovered a universe noone had imagined.Tothis day, we see the effects of this discovery from medical necessities(PET scan imaging-Positron Emission Tomography) to science fiction (StarTrek).

The quotations and anecdotes Pais chooses are well placed andoften very funny.They are also supported by theimages of Diracportrayed in the sketch on the cover and in the few photographs scatteredthrough the first two lectures.They reveal his character well.He sawmathematical and physical realities so clearly that he simply could notunderstand why others did not see them as well.The photo of him"listening" to future Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in Maurice Jacob'ssection is one of the most amusing of the collection.

Reviews (4)

Very informative
I thought this book was great and did a great job of pacing the reader through Enrico's life, as well as superbly establishing a connection between the reader and Enrico. Emilio Serge did a great job of making it feel like you actually knew Enrico Fermi in real life which made the book that much more engaging and enjoyable. To be honest I found the beginning of the book the most interesting, more specifically Enrico's childhood experiences, influences and how he became interested in physics altogether. After checking multiple online sources, I found the book itself to be one of the most comprehensive sources for information on Fermi, as it includes the entire scope of his accomplishments, dreams, failures and life changing experiences. Written in a very simple yet elegant manner, Serge writes with an embedded loving friendship that still exists despite Enrico's untimely death at the young age of 53. Every page is filled with a seemingly endless number of intriguing facts about Enrico's life, whether it be his troubles and resistances along the way to success or the outcome that occurred after his development of the atomic bomb. Recommended.

From one physisict to another
This is an interesting biography for it is written by a friend with same interests and loyalty to each other. No jealosy, no envie but appreciation and loyalty how nice. This is the story of Fermi mostly about his intellectual and social life and not about his private life and that part is in fact covered very nicely by his wife in her beautiful book. Segre without any short cuts describe Fermi, his behaior, his mastery in physics with all important documents reproduced and day by day their successes and few dissappointments. There are certain scientific explanations about the experiments they conducted days in and days out and if you are not into Atomic physics those explanations are just words but even if you do not know what they are doing you still get the pleasure of visualising masters in action. descriptions are very vivid. Hard work is necessary but knowing what you are doing is more important and this book along with the biographies of other master Physisist shows the same. Prof Serge is exteremely good in writing biography, you do not get bored while reading the book. All the surroundings, social and political world conditions are clearly described, showing the conditions these people had to go through and yet was exteremely productive.

Reviews (4)

"Never Destroy What You Cannot Create"
"Never destroy what you cannot create" was one of Leo Szliard's codes of conduct.Books about unsung heros' of the scientific age are almost like novels.Nevertheless, great men seem to rise above dry biography if they had some esoteric ways. We have all read stacks of magazines and books about Albert Einstein to probe into all the details of what made him tick (in relative time, of course).Leo Szliard was a mental gypsy from the old world who saw the new world before most of the other "famous" thinkers of the 20th Century even opened their eyes.A must read for a knowledge foundation in enjoying the lifestyles of the Wise and Unusual.

Outstanding Portrait of a Catalytic Genius
Anyone interested in Szilard, early 20th Century World History, the A-Bomb, or all of the above will find this book hard to put down. This biography is comprehensive, well-researched and properly kind to its subject. Dr. Szilard probably will never get enough credit for his genius and all his great ideas and achievements, but this book does him justice. He seems to come alive in this book, always several steps ahead of everyone else.

American culture's emphasis on individualism often ignores the more collaborative contributions such as Dr. Szilard's. An original, he both created and collaborated, and this book tells his story.

At times, I thought the author might have been over-stating some of Dr. Szilard's accompishments, but the story is otherwise well-done, and frankly, Dr. Szilard deserves a little promotion, so I didn't mind.

Reviews (7)

Elementary
This man nos nuttiing bout scince i tink he shdntld rlease ne mre boks in da futr

Captivating!
Captivating biography! One of the best. In a class by itself!
Written before the popular Broadway play, "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn, Pais' book covers the Heisenberg-Bohr meeting in 1941[the real one],--- and there is a lot more! We are fortunate that Pais has given us this, and several other wonderful biographies;-- the one about Albert Einstein stands out! It is especially fortunate that he has chosen to write for the general public. I can't think of anyone who did, or possibly could have done it better. His writing is captivating, and unique in its recreation of the times, and the social context of the scientific events. Pais further succeeds magnificently in bringing to life the many colorful personalities. This includes the young physicists born in Europe around 1900 who arrived in Copenhagen in the 1920ties to work with Bohr, some later to win the Nobel Prize,-- how he became a father figure to some of them,- Heisenberg, for example. And there are the other players,

Albert Einstein early on, and Pais himself later, in the drama of quantum physics of the Twentieth Century. Even if you might perhaps not be scientifically inclined, and if you choose to skip the physics sections, I don't think you will be disappointed.

Reviews (3)

Scientific and sexual fireworks.
This is a masterful biography, but one need to have a profound knowledge of higher mathematics and a basic one in physics to fully understand it.

Walter Moore shows that Schrödinger's life and thought was at least controversial.

Life
Schrödinger's personal itinerary is exemplary for the 20th century. He was born in a comfortable upper-middle class, but his parents lost their savings in the German inflation after WW I. The result was famine and diseases. It marked the rest of his life. As a young man he was confronted with unemployment and nearly left physics for financial reasons!
He found a decent job only at the age of 34. Even after winning the Nobel Prize he was still confronted with 'pension' problems.

Science
Walter Moore gives us a magisterial and detailed analysis of the scientific discoveries of ES, from his humble beginnings to the elaboration of the quantum wave function and after.
It shows that ES was above all a mathematical genius and a not so brilliant experimenter.
ES remained all his life opposed to the complemantary (particle/wave) interpretation of quantum mechanics (the 'Kopenhagen oracle' for ES). For him, there were only waves!

Sex
Beside science, sex was the principal occupation of his life, with all combinations imaginable. He lived a ménage à trois and sometimes à quatre, but still fell in love with other women, also with very young ones for he had a Lolita complex. He could without doubt have been accused of paedophilia.
But his intense love affairs stimulated highly his scientific creativity.
One can only wonder if his 'wild' behaviour and negative view of bourgeois marriage were not fundamentally influenced by the fact that he couldn't marry his first true love, because her family found that he was too poor!

Politics
He had a deep contempt for the governing classes (politicians, clergy) who 'enslave men by violence and use the religious desire of many people to promote superstition to rule over the dispossessed'. He also distrusted democracy!

Philosophical world view
This is certainly one of the strangest aspects of his thoughts.
He was convinced that physics provided absolutely no answers to philosophical questions (e. g. free will). All his life he remained, like Einstein, an adept of determinism.
His philosophical views and ethical principles were completely dissociated from his real life!
As an adept of the Vedanta, he believed the Buddhist wisdom that a thing could be both A and non-A (horribile dictu)!
He was also heavily influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer.

This work gives excellent explanations of the Vedanta, and the philosophy of Mach and Schopenhauer.
It contains a very painful paragraph on Heidegger.

I see only one minus point: the author doesn't give Bohr's pertinent response to the EPR-article against the Copenhagen interpretation of qm.

This is a brilliant book and certainly the definitive biography of Schrödinger. It is by no means a hagiography and doesn't dodge some 'weird' aspects of Schrödinger's life.
Not to be missed.

....WOW
This book, is amazing.I came across it because I was forced to do a project for chemistry on Erwin Schrödinger, and I'm glad I did.It's a 512 page biography of him, and I think that says it all.It covers and extensive amount of ground, and is very useful for anyone doing any researh on the man.It gives a lot of background information about what was going on in his life, and the events in the world around him.Whenever he went to a new college, there was always some information on the college itself.If Schrödinger did research on a topic, there would be a small history on the scientist that came before him and how they affected him. The book is virtually packed with quotes form other people, letters, and speeches.One of the other things I liked was that it contained details of Schrödinger's personal life, such as his extramarital affairs and details on his marriage, and his family history.Want to see some pictures?There's that too.Bet you didn't know that Schrödinger wrote poetry.Well he did, and all of it is here too, in both German and an English translation.Another thing that makes the book stand out it that it is bery readable.Walter Moore did an excellent job writing the book, and it shows.I can say that you only need to read one book about Schrödinger: this one.

I tawt I taw a putty tat!
The 20th century has boasted a greater number of top-notch physicists than any prior epoch in history.The 21st century, and any future century beyond it, will be hard-pressed to match the level of scientific genius presented by the 20th.Names such as John Archibald Wheeler, Eugene Wigner, Paul Dirac, Max Planck, Louis deBroglie, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Roger Penrose, Freeman Dyson and Stephen Hawking have set the standard for scientific and intellectual excellence.

Another name which belongs in this esteemed list is that of Erwin Schroedinger.Schroedinger influenced the field of quantum mechanics perhaps more than any other single scientific contributor of modern times. Here, Walter Moore has compiled his unique story so that all may have access to the life and times of this extraordinary man.

Moore's writing style is easily up to the task of keeping the interest of the reader.He does an excellent job of tracing Schroedinger's academic career as he obtained posts at the university of Jena, university of Zurich, university of Berlin [he was the hand-picked successor of none other than Max Planck], university of Oxford, university of Graz (Austria), the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and the university of Vienna.Schroedinger was also offered professorships at 2 US universities as well (university of Wisconsin, Madison and Princeton university), but declined both.Moore does an exquisite job in his disinterment of all the facts, personal factors and politics behind S'decisions to transfer (or not to transfer) from post to post.Moore's elucidation of S' relationship with the Nazis (who called him "Politically unreliable") is exemplery, as is his coverage of the friendships and correspondence that S shared with his peers.

What makes Moore's biography superb is that he equally concentrates on S' personal life as well as his intellectual endeavors.Moore gives an authentic and upfront treatment of S' rather bizarre love arrangements.Like the composer Richard Wagner, S had many affairs with the wives of his friends (a few of which resulted in children), as well as myriad young woman just reaching adulthood.Moore offers a credible psycho-analysis of the motivations for his sexual conquests, andcomparisons to the behavior of the persona in Nabokov's "Lolita" which Moore alludes to are certainly warranted.

Like all good modern biographies, the book is filled with plenty of pictures of the personages and locales which were integrated within S' life [including the immortal assemblage of the 1927 (5th) Solvay conference].Also, for the mathematically inclined amongst us, the work is filled with a good many of the equations that S developed and worked on during his lifetime.The good news, for those of us not so mathematically inclined, is that an understanding of them is not essential to a generic comprehension of what S accomplished.

Reviews (3)

Outstanding read
The stories of the lives of these physicists are lively and engaging. The science is surprisingly deep, given such a breezy format. This is a must-read for the thinking person.

Great Book!
This is the best book I have read about the human side of physicists. Although, I have a Masters degree in physics, you don't need to be a practicing scientist to throughly enjoy the contents of this wonderful work. Cropper did an outstanding writing job.

Whata wonderful book!
I've picked up many books over the years telling the stories of great scientists, but this is the only book of this type that I couldn't put down.I am a degreed engineer, nowworking in computers, with physics as a hobby.The coverage of Thermodynamics, which I have studied extensively, was fascinatingly rich and accessible. The complexity of other topics, such as nuclear physics, of which I know little, was surprizingly clear.