Bird of passage: Recollections of a physicist [Hardcover]

Rudolf Ernst Peierls (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The lighthearted title is a clue to the easy-going style of Peierls's memoir of a career spent working (and sometimes playing) with his peersthe scientists whose ideas and experiments generated the awesome body of laws and theories known as quantum physics. Born in Germany in 1907, Peierls lived to win a British knighthoodbut never, it seems, once he had escaped Hitler's Germany with his Russian-born wife, settled in one place long enough to feel more than a bird-of-passage. Out of Peierls's recollections of life in universities and labs, he constructs a lively, charming and informative behind-the-scenes account of men and women on the forefront of physics. Peierls studied or worked on several continents, numbered Bethe, Bohr, Rutherford and other greats among his friends, andhere revealingly describedcontributed to the development of the A-bomb at Los Alamos right up its first use, at Hiroshima. Photos. December
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This personal, anecdotal, and often humorous autobiography reads like a history of 20th-century physics, but with the added warmth of a very good novel. Peierls's personal contact with most of the giants of modern physics, including Bethe, Weisskopf, Bohr, Fermi, and Sommerfeld, provides a unique glimpse of events that have shaped much of our modern world. A distinguished physicist himself, Peierls spent most of his career in leading centers of physics in Europe, England, and America, including work with Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the first atomic bomb. Strongly recommended for most libraries. E. Robert Paul, History of Science Prog., Dickinson Coll., Carlisle, Pa.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691083908
• ISBN-13: 978-0691083902
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,143,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A born optimist, October 29, 2007

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Bird of Passage: Recollections of a Physicist (Paperback)

For Rudolf Peierls, an optimist is a person who believes the future is uncertain.
His autobiography contains first hand information on the characters of 3 generations of physicists (e.g., Klaus Fuchs, Edward Teller or Robert Oppenheimer). It is full of anecdotes, also about his personal life and his family, which was confronted with 2 world wars and racism in Nazi Germany and other countries. As an `alien enemy' or an `undesirable' he had problems to obtain visas.
Apparently, he was a brilliant teacher, who focused on general knowledge of theoretical physics, because it widened the range of jobs open to his students and enabled them to do their job better.
In his research he found that the hardest thing to do was to ask the right questions.

But probably he will be best remembered as a collaborator in the `Manhattan District' project under R. Oppenheimer.
His evaluation of his atom bomb work is perfectly clear: he was too optimistic. As a scientist, he saw `the ease with which the atomic bomb could be used'. He thought that `the American authorities were reasonable and intelligent people, and would make responsible decisions', like `drop a bomb on a sparsely populated area to show its effects.'
On the question if scientists should have refrained from working on the bomb, his answer is that a strike was unrealistic. The bomb would in any case sooner or later be developed by someone.
Fighting against the misuse of science, Rudolf Peierls became chairman of the now defunct Pugwash Conference whose aim was avoidance of nuclear war (see also C. Djerassi). He received a great shock when R. Oppenheimer was condemned for `grave defects of character' during the McCarthy witch hunt.

This book is the expression of a true humanist. It is a must read for all those interested in the history of mankind, and of science in particular.
Nevertheless, one needs to have a solid basic knowledge of physics in order to understand it completely.