The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born [Hardcover]

Nancy Thorndike Greenspan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

In 1920, Albert Einstein wrote to Max Born, “Theoretical physics will flourish wherever you happen to be; there is no other Born to be found in Germany today.” The End of the Certain World presents for the first time Born’s full story: Nobel physicist, a discoverer of quantum theory, exile from Hitler’s Germany, teacher of nine Nobel physicists. Born’s role in the “Golden Age of Physics” helped to shape the science of the twentieth century and open the door to the modern era. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, among others, flocked to Göttingen, Germany in the 1920’s to work with Born, the physicist who had discovered one of the most profound principles of the century - the physics of indeterminacy. In a cruel twist of fate Born, a pacifist who loved science for its beauty, had educated these renowned scientists who developed the atom bomb. Not everyone embraced Born’s revolutionary quantum principle. Throughout much of his forty year friendship with Einstein, the two debated the nature of the universe - deterministic versus non-deterministic - with Einstein declaring “God does not play dice”, even though the Nobel Committee supported Born’s position when they awarded him the 1954 Prize. A social history and a history of science as well as an intimate biography, The End of the Certain World reveals the story of a great physicist and humanitarian and his struggle with the forces of religion, politics, and war during the upheavals of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

German physicist Max Born (1882-1970) was Werner Heisenberg's mentor on the experiments in quantum mechanics that earned Heisenberg the 1932 Nobel Prize and enduring fame; one of the most valuable contributions of Greenspan's biography, the first ever of Born, is an analysis of the backstage considerations that excluded Born from sharing in that honor. (He was recognized more than 20 years later for related research.) Although Born's theoretical breakthroughs get some explanation, Greenspan is much more concerned with the human drama behind the science, and, granted access by the family to Born's papers, she uses them to significant effect in drawing out her tale. Born's struggle for full recognition from his peers is placed in the context of the anti-Semitic milieu of early 20th-century Germany and a turbulent marriage that at one point resulted in a nervous breakdown. When the Nazis took power, Born was forced to resign his university post and flee with his family to England; his efforts as a refugee to regain personal and professional stability provide some of the biography's most poignant moments. This empathetic work, Greenspan's first solo effort, lifts a deserving figure out of semi-obscurity and adds a valuable perspective on the origin of modern physics. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Mar.)
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From the Back Cover

"This is an insightful, moving, and beautifully written portrait of Max Born, a deeply sensitive man who in his long life experienced familial happiness and discord, professional success and injustice, political tranquility and upheaval, and through it all made his mark as one of the leading theoretical physicists of the twentieth century." -Roger H. Stuewer, emeritus professor of physics, University of Minnesota

"I am so proud of my grandfather. Nancy Greenspan has written an incredible book! I learned how much my grandfather influenced the science and history of the twentieth century-from saving his fellow scientists from Hitler to debating Einstein on the uncertainty in the structure of the universe. The book is a wonderfully informative heirloom-if I may use that word-not only for my family but for the world of science and humanity." -Olivia Newton-John, granddaughter of Max Born

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; export ed edition (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738206938
• ISBN-13: 978-0738206936
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,430,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Certain End of His World, July 28, 2008

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Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born (Hardcover)

If anyone more prototypically German in character than Max Born ever lived, I'd be interested in meeting him. Born incarnated all the best in German history, all the virtues of German culture, and yet that same German culture did its utmost to destroy him. Inevitably, this biography of Max Born is also a "biography" of Germany in the first half of the 20th Century, and of the Nazi sociopathy that created the Shoah.

History, not science, is the metier of "The End of the Certain World." Those lucky few readers who fully understand relativity and quantum physics will be able to grapple with Born's contributions to science and to judge his centrality, but such an understanding is not at all required to grapple with the biographical portrait of the man and his many scientific colleagues and rivals. Author Nancy Greenspan makes no effort to explain quantum physics per se; I doubt that she would be qualified to do so. Instead she portrays the dynamics of Born's career as a scientist, in terms of his working relationships with other physicists and academic institutions. Of course, the cast of physicists in this drama includes virtually every great name of the century - Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Dirac, Einstein, inter alia - and each of them emerges as a specific human being, some admirable, some hateful, in Greenspan's smooth, detailed narrative. Born's marriage and the fitful course thereof constitute a parallel 'novel' to his scientific career, and a precise counterpoint to the larger narrative of Jewish assimilation and European anti-Semitism.

Of particular emotional interest was the story of Born's efforts to rescue Jewish scientists as well as his own extended family members from the certain fate that awaited them in Nazi Germany. Born was not alone in that effort; in fact, he was a beneficiary of such an effort by others, including some of his own previous students. What is particularly painful to read about is the indifference and even hostility toward the plight of Jews of Germany. Born found that 'everybody' knew what was likely to be happening, but few cared enough to intervene. Physicists, in fact, fared better than most. Jewish musicians, for example, were jealously excluded from any opportunities to migrate to England because English musicians feared the competition.

During his years in England and Scotland, first as a refugee and later as a naturalized citizen, Born strayed occasionally over the edges of political activism but quickly withdrew to the sanity of science. Politically, he was hardly more than a Labor party voter, yet he and other "German" scientists were routinely suspected of disloyalty, sometimes because of attachment to Germany! and sometimes because it was widely assumed that they were inherently Russian communist-sympathizers. The lunatic actions of Klaus Fuchs gave that attitude an unfortunate plausibility. As for Max Born, he remained from his earliest statements to his last profoundly anti-ideological; he declared himself "skeptical with regards to economic beliefs...not..based on ethical principles." In Scotland, when he was denounced as a probable communist, he stated that he was "not a socialist, as you seem to think, if this expression means blind belief in Marxist theories." Dialectical materialism, he said, was "rubbish." Author Greenspan summarizes her undertanding of his position:

...with the "western system of profit and vested interests," squalor and poverty existed for the masses and luxury for the few. The capitalists system - the unethical drive for profit - had supported the military buildups in Germany and Japan. Born wanted to temper the "ethical inferiority of the profit system" by merging the efficiency of free-market production with a regard for workers' rights.

In Born's later years, in safer but no more economically secure straits, he became conscientiously concerned with the social/historical effects of his own and others' science, and devoted much of his time and prestige to formulating a scientific community commitment to resisting militaristic misuse of knowledge. He was an active backer and signatory of the two major proposals for nuclear disarmament of the 1950s.

The stimulus that sent Nancy Greenspan into years of research about Born - reading his letters and his wife's sprawling diaries, scoring national archives, learning enough physics and math to write such a book comfortably - was oddly personal, all based on a friendship with Born's grand-daughter, who introduced her casually to surviving members of the Born family. Here's a riddle: what well-known 'British' singer/actress is the grand-daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist?

Altogether, this is a vivid old-fashioned biography, well worth reading for its historical significance, but fundamentally a full-length portrait of an exceptional human being, virtues and flaws included. I finished the book thinking 'hey, Max Born was a great guy,' and 'oy, what he had to live through!'

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb account of a Great Physicist, April 30, 2005

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Enjoy Books, Ken "enjoy books" (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born (Hardcover)

Having developed a great respect for the works of Max Born through his books on atomic physics, I always was surprised that he received little credit (compared with Bohr, Heisenberg, and others who also developed a lot of QM).

This book provides an exciting, interesting review of his life that would interest physicists, people of German ancestry, Jewish ancestry, and others interested in early 20th century history, from a personal point of view. As a physicist, I like that the physics ideas are not simplified or glossed over. For example, Born realized that the electron had to occupy a 3D space within the atom (rather than, for example, a circular Keplerian orbit), because of the compression of solids. This is NOT a physics book, however, but an excellent biography.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, April 4, 2005

By 

Giftee "Giftee" (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born (Hardcover)

Max Born was an amazing man. From his childhood until his retirement in Bad Pyrmont, Circa, he had accomplished more than most people. After refining the world of Quantum Mechanics using his own theories, he helped changed the world. However, he was not recognized for that. It wasn't until after he retired that he was recognized for his participation on wave functions. Max Born lived a life full of tragedy and greatness. Being a Jewish man in Germany, life didn't come by very easily for him at times. Being forced to emigrate from his home, and the coming to the realization that he was the one who taught some of participants who created the atom bomb, he came to the realization that, "Love is a power just as strong as the atom." This quote from him proved to show that he did have a love for Physics, he enjoyed it, and it was a passion of his. Nancy Greenspan did an excellent job with this book. She showed the world about the life of Max Born through the first thorough biography of him. She showed us his life through a portrait with her words. She showed us him in his times of despair and his times of prosperity. This book is a great read. It will show you a dramatic life as well as informing you about the world of Physics, specifically the Quantum Revolution. This book will teach you of a great man, who lived a great life, and people now are just beginning to find out his great imagination.