Customer Reviews

Petit Point: A Candid Portrait on the Aberrations of Science

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This is collection of very short vignettes, sketching with a somewhat acid pen the life and work of a few scientists, most of them physicists. It does not say whether these characters are real or make-believe, but a few of the portraits come quite close to well known people (so even though I live far, far away from the center of the universe, I think I can identify Benoit Mandelbrot, Brian Josephson and Bernd Matthias. And I am sure other readers can put names on many more chapters of these ``Enigma Variations'' of science.)

The text is wonderfully written, and the descriptions are surgically precise. There are a few heroes, a few scoundrels, and many great but flawed humans. The tale of their struggles and ploys is always told warmly and with respect. They reflect so well the fauna of laboratories and research centers that you can see in every page glimpses of men and women you have known, maybe even of yourself.

All in all, the text is so good and the characters so accurate, this book should be compulsory reading for all first-year graduate students in any branch of science.