Customer Reviews

Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory, 1890-1926 (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

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Crafting the Quantum is a detailed historical study of the Sommerfeld school, which included some of the most important physicists of the twentieth century including Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg. Arnold Sommerfeld trained at least eight Nobel laureates and his Munich based school was the most successful educational institution for theoretical physics in the twentieth century. Seth's book takes a close look at why the training Sommerfeld offered his students was so successful. He also provides a detailed study of the Sommerfeld school's contribution to the development of Quantum mechanics and the way in which their problem orientated approach fused mathematics, physics and engineering in order to pursue solutions to specific physical questions. It is a very impressive piece of work both because of the level of scholarship in both the English and German sources and its grasp of the physics. It will be of enormous interest to physicists and engineers as well as historians of science.

This book is too simplistic and very reductionist. The writing style is also very philosophically diffuse. Lack of engagement with the proper German sources has made the analysis all too easy.