Customer Reviews

It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This collection of eleven essays, each written by a different author, is a pleasing assortment of articles which I recommend highly. The essays cover an astonishingly wide range of unrelated topics, including the Planck-Einstein Equation for the Energy of a Quantum, the Drake equation that estimates the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy, and Shannon's Equations on information theory.

The only unpleasant aspect of this book is the uneven quality of the writing. Each author has a unique style of expression, so some chapters are exhilarating while others sound stilted and contrived. This is the reason I've limited my opinion to four instead of five stars.

The most technically "beautiful" equation in the book is probably the Dirac equation, but the chapter on logistic mapping and chaos theory ("The Best Possible Time to be Alive", by Robert May) is far and away the most enjoyable and best-written essay. These alone would warrant the price of the book.

IMBB is not an easy book to read, but it is one that continues to reward with subsequent readings. Though the first half of the book is weighted toward physics, this is not a physics book. It also explores equations important in biology, ecology, information theory, game theory and SETI. Some of the essays require a fairly deep background in science to "get" the subtleties, but even these pay rewards for careful reading. You don't need to understand every word of the technical science to get a sense of the history and the people who uncovered these equations and how they apply to our modern world.

If you have seen Frayn's Copenhagen, the essay on Schrodinger's equation entitled "Erotica, Aesthetics and Schrodinger's Wave Equation", will give you additional insight into Heisenberg, Bohr and Schrodinger.

As editor Farmelo says in his introduction "In common with with all great scientific equations, E=MC2 is in many ways similar to a great poem. Just as a perfect sonnet is spoiled if so much as a word or item of punctuation is changed, not a single detail of a great equation...can be altered without rendering it useless."

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I receive an acknowledgement after Farmelo's essay on Einstein and Planck.

At first I was disappointed - the most beautiful equation in the world, e^i.pi = -1, was missing! As I read the book, I looked back at the title : great equations of Modern Science, not of Modern Mathematics. And indeed that is what the book is.
However I do have a few criticisms :
I knew by reputation only 2 of the 12 authors - who were the other people? Long after I had searched out their biographies on the web, I found them at the front of the book - but before the title page rather than after - how strange to put them there, or not at the back of the book ?
I didn't think the Drake equation was that `great' - and in Oliver Morton's chapter he places the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Costa Rica when in fact its in Puerto Rico.
In the opening chapter, Graham Farmelo briefly alludes to `British Astronomers announcing their results' without explaining what it was they were looking for and what they found? Only in the later chapters by Peter Galison & Roger Penrose respectively do they take pains to explain that Sir Arthur Eddington measured the bending of starlight during an eclipse.
I was confused in the chapter on Schrodingers Wave Equation - it didn't describe the form I was familiar with. Then in the notes at the end of the book Arthur Miller explained the more general form - and confessed that the `time' element had been ignored - rather a strange omission in my opinion.
Shannons Equations & the Logistic Map were both new to me - and very interesting they were.

This is very much a mixed bag. There are many interesting anecdotes and lots
of biographical information. There are many glimpses of science and good descriptions
of scientific controversies. Feuds. About half the essays are about theoretical
physics.

The essays vary considerably in their attention to the equation that is supposed to be the
subject of the essay. In some, it really is the subject. In others, the equation could have
been omitted and a little editing would allow the essay to be published in a different book
about science.

The Drake equation does not even belong in the book, since it is not a great equation of
modern science. It is an example of a technique widely used in engineering and business,
particularly in estimating and forecasting. But the debates over the factors in it were
interesting, and the SETI effort is science. Even failures can advance science.

The "Environmental Fairy Tale" about the Molina-Rowland chemical equation has some good
science, but so much propaganda that I came to doubt much of what I thought
I had just learned. Gaia theory is mentioned without doubting it. The precautionary
principle is mentioned as a good thing. The recent warming trend is clearly blamed on us.

Equations means mathematics, but there is not much math. In one place there is an attempt
to explain the subscripts of a tensor, while elsewhere the idea of a logarithm is explained
every time it is used.

Most readers that would consider any book about science will probably find portions they like
and parts they dislike. Be cautious about the average rating of this book. One review is
present twice, and one three times.

This book is written so that anyone with a general science background can understand the importance of the work and discoveries of these great minds. It demonstrates how their work has played a strategic roll in the historical events of our time and how it may affect the very future of mankind.
Besides analyzing the studies and writtings of these scientists, the book also gives us a very good description of their character and personality. One actually feels a personnel contact with each of them their unique traits are so carefully described. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in science or history and to every college and high school student.

I got this book with high expectations, and it turned out to be a good read for me. It introduced me to many basic scientific concepts that I have since then been able to learn much more about. As well as providing a basic understanding of the equations and the concepts, the essays, written by many different authors, still adventure into some interesting material. The book includes essays on Schrodinger's equation, Einstein's relativity, E = m c^2, the CFC problem, the Drake equation, and a few others. If you already have a vast knowledge of these equations and the concepts that accompany them, this book would be of no use to you (except for the Penrose essay...he's the master). For a person beginning to delve into these areas of study...buy this.

The quantities on the two side of each of the equations in the book, are from science, or from life. The equations result from scientific experiments or from pure theory. Planck's equation signaled the start of atomic physics, and Einstein's E=m c^2 , the continuation. Dirac's equation reveals the secrets of the electron. All the equations predict physical reality; and yet they are strikingly simple to state, perhaps not to fully understand.-- They *are* beautiful! . Really! They are also fundamental discoveries that affect us all. Schrodinger's equation [along with the equivalt formulation of Heisenberg] puts quantum theory on a solid footing, and started wave mechanics. Shannon's equations initiated the age of information technology. And there are more: relativity, astronomy, dynamics, chemestry... The book consists of chapters written by authorities in the field, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg..., but no [or at least very little] knowledge of science is assumed on the part of the reader. Highly recommended!

This collection of essays is truly beautiful! If you do not know anything about the topics covered in the different essays, they will be a great introduction into them and you probably will be looking for further readings in the topics you most liked. If you are already familiar with these subjects, read the essays for fun, they are in general very well written and easy to understand, even for lay persons like myself. Additionally, these essays will remind you of the history and discoveries of the scientists involved and will provide an excellent summary for what you already know.

One of the essays I had already read in another book by its author, Nobel Prize winner in physics Frank Wilczec Fantastic Realities: 49 Mind Journeys And a Trip to Stockholm: "A piece of magic: The Dirac Equations". I found it the best essay in that book and also the best in this one, so I enjoyed reading it again. From my review of that essay: "I loved the article written as a tribute to Dirac, here Mr. Wilczec shows that he not only masters "asymptotic freedom", but that he is also an extremely skilled writer. While reading this chapter, I felt as if a mystery was being unveiled. I admired the beauty in Dirac's equations, how he solved the problem of the results of the equations showing both positive and negative charges for the same particle and how he simply stated that the negative results must be "antimatter". What a journey!"

The essay on Shannon's equations was great (by the way, the same equation is used to define entropy in thermodynamics, but it is not very clear if this is a strange coincidence Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life). The Yang-Mills equation was also very revealing to me, but in fact I liked each and every chapter... I also recommend Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics, Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics (Princeton Science Library) and Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe for brilliant accounts of theoretical physics.

My excellently translated Spanish edition by Tusquets Metatemas presented the essays in a different sequence, theoretical physics first, covering half of the book (physics uses obviously more equations than other sciences) and leaving biology/chemistry/ecology for the end. I kind of liked this sequence better.

A book to be treasured and gifted to others. Working math skills not necessary, only requires an appreciatinon of math and physics.

This collection of eleven essays, each written by a different author, is a pleasing assortment of articles which I recommend highly. The essays cover an astonishingly wide range of unrelated topics, including the Planck-Einstein Equation for the Energy of a Quantum, the Drake equation that estimates the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy, and Shannon's Equations on information theory.

The only unpleasant aspect of this book is the uneven quality of the writing. Each author has a unique style of expression, so some chapters are exhilarating while others sound stilted and contrived. This is the reason I've limited my opinion to four instead of five stars.

The most technically "beautiful" equation in the book is probably the Dirac equation, but the chapter on logistic mapping and chaos theory ("The Best Possible Time to be Alive", by Robert May) is far and away the most enjoyable and best-written essay. These alone would warrant the price of the book.