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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Physics, genius, humanity. 5 stars., October 1, 2007
This review is from: Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics (Hardcover)
Some years ago I read, and greatly enjoyed, George Gamow's `Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory,' so I new something of Segre's theme as soon as I saw his title (Segre is a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania). In Gamow's book, the account of the Copenhagen "Faust" of 1932 had been a postscript, included to show how great minds--the discoverers and framers of quantum theory--were given to playfulness. Gamow, unfortunately, wasn't present that evening, having been denied travel to Denmark by the Soviet police state, but he not only included the script of the skit in his book, his own drawings illustrated it. Appropriately, Segre's book is dedicated to the memory of Gamow. But the `Faust' skit/ parody is just a poignant `thumbnail' of a hugely fascinating period of explosive intellectual achievements.
Segre's book starts slowly, perhaps awkwardly from a literary perspective (at least it struck me that way as I began to read it), but immediately he foreshadows that his accounts are pregnant with fascinating scientific, human, and historical insights. Segre does not fail to make good on the promise.
1932 proved to be "the miracle year" and something of a triumphal culmination for quantum theory, not because all of its problems were then solved--they still are not--but because by the end of that year its startling cadre of guiding geniuses, most notably Bohr, Pauli, Heisenberg, Fermi, and Dirac, had all done their finest work (though still admired by the `boy physicists,' Planck and Einstein had made their great contributions two and three decades earlier). It was the golden year of the golden age of physics, the headiest time in the whole history of science. From the early 1920s through the early 30s, due to the great influence and impulsion of Bohr, Copenhagen was the hub for brilliant boyish physicists delving eagerly into a strange new understanding of the world. Then Hitler happened, and the world changed in many ways.
Well, that's just my own abrupt synopsis, Segre's book tells the story beautifully. In due course, Segre does an excellent job of explaining and connecting the principle insights of quantum theory, he unveils not merely cold genius but the humanity and frailty of genius. The reader will sense that he/she has come to somehow know these men and women (yes, there were some women in this `man's world'), and to care about them, especially Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Ehrenfest. The `human factor' of Segre's book certainly exceeds that of most texts on physics.
The author begins by telling the reader that this will be quite a story. And it is. The deeper one gets into it, the harder it becomes to put the book down. For the last 140 pages or so, I had no inclination to stop and finished the book around 2:30 AM--something that is hardly typical although I read many books. Segre has authored a tremendous book about science that is also a book about the humanity of frail human genius, and even about humanity generally. Gamow's book (Thirty Years that Shook Physics) is wonderful; professor Segre's book is even better.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fascinating History of Quantum Physics, October 21, 2007
This review is from: Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics (Hardcover)
Gino Segre is a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania and who's uncle Emilio Segre studied under Enrico Fermi. In his new book "Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the soul of Physics" he effectively uses a skit parody of Goethe's "Faust" to introduce the reader to the founders of Quantum Theory and especially to the "Copenhagen interpretation" of Quantum Mechanics. The skit was conceived by George Gamow (who later published it in one of his own books) and mostly written by Max Delbruck. It was to be performed by the younger scientists at Niels Bohr's annual gathering at his Copenhagen Institute in 1932. The attenders were many of the then and future big names of theoretical physics, plus Lise Meitner, the lone woman and an experimental physicist. These included Bohr, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Meitner and Delbruck. Wolfgang Pauli did not make it, but was portrayed as "Mephisto" in the skit. Einstein never attended these meetings because he was not happy with the whole turn of Quantum Mechanics, which seemed to make the universe a victim of chance.
This is a brilliant retelling of a fascinating story of scientific discovery. Segre also weaves some of his own family history into the tale, which gives the reader a taste of the personal and political, as well as the scientific, turmoil of the times. The year also saw Adolph Hitler's rise to power in Germany, an event that would soon affect them all. Such connections help us understand the monumental difficulties and the strengths and weaknesses of the people involved in this remarkable period. In fact 1932 was called "The Miracle Year" by many physicists, although Einstein, for one, was not satisfied. He eventually retired to his study at Princeton to work, rather fruitlessly, on the Unified Field Theory, still fighting with Bohr and others over the "incomplete" Quantum Theory.
Eventually the "Copenhagen Interpretation" became a fixture in Quantum Mechanics, still standing to this day, despite constant and ongoing attacks. This is certainly how the best science is done, with the participants usually still speaking to each other, despite deep philosophical differences.
Segre has made all of these historical and physical details come alive in his book. I recommend it highly to anyone who would try to understand what Quantum Physics is all about.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, and poorly written, February 8, 2009
Being very interested in the early history of quantum mechanics, having read "Thirty Years That Shook Physics," and having scanned through all the positive reviews on Amazon, I borrowed this book anticipating a great read. I got about a third of the way through it and took it back. Frankly, I found the book boring and uninsightful. As story-telling FIC is badly organized: it jumps back and forth between bits and doesn't seem to have a consistent line it wants to develop about what actually happened in those magical years. Worse yet (from my perspective), with all the trading in personal details about these great individuals, we actually get very little insight into who they were and why they had the effect they did. There is *endless* restatement of the theme that Niels Bohr had a profound effect on other physicists, especially the younger ones. Okay, yeah, we get it already. Pappa Bohr was a big, big deal: the "Miss Jean Brody" of quantum physics, no less. But why did he have this effect? Because he was intense? Because he was profound? Because he accompanied the younger folks to movie theatres? All very charming, but we never get beyond superficialities in any of these questions. And often it is extremely annoying, not just because of the repetition, but because of missed opportunities to develop what seemed to me important themes. There is a very interesting anecdote in FIC about Bohr visiting Goettingen for a series of lectures and surprising the German physicists with his account of how physical ideas came to him: first as a visual picture, then as a model, and only much later as a theory that could be formalized with equations. This point is interesting because we know that Rutherford was profoundly unhappy with quantum physics exactly because of his inability to form a simple physical picture of interactions under it. There is an interesting story to be told here, and embedded within all the details that FIC collects that story may be present, but I couldn't find it. Personally I think the author did not do justice to the subject matter. And if the answer is that I should have kept on reading, I'm sorry but that's just a concession to the poor quality of the writing.
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