I met Fritz Zwicky just twice. (Disclosure: I have used Zwicky's two masterful galaxy catalogues for over half a century. As an astronomer, I do galaxy-related work that depends on them. I and my coworkers also compile galaxy catalogues that build on what Zwicky accomplished in his.) I also knew of his early prediction of neutron stars, his discovery of dark matter in clusters of galaxies, and of his pioneering work on supernovae. His book
"Morphological Astronomy" has been an idiosyncratic favorite of mine for many years. In short, I knew him as an unconventional, but nevertheless brilliant and innovative astronomer.
And, of course, I had heard tales of his apparently chronic crankiness. However, I can't confirm those from personal experience -- he was a gentleman both times I met him, and he later inscribed my copy of his "Red Book" galaxy catalogue without my having to badger him for his signature.
Later, I also heard and read sketchy reports about his "alternative career" in jet propulsion and rocketry. I had wanted to know more about that aspect of his life, so when I discovered that John Johnson had written a book about Zwicky, I bought it immediately. Having lived in Pasadena for over two decades, and having been a Los Angeles Times reader for all of those years, I was familiar with Johnson's popular science writing. I hoped that his book would be a good way to acquaint myself with Zwicky's whole life -- the story of this gentleman astronomer who nevertheless seemed to inspire wildly conflicting emotions in many of the people whom we knew in common.
My hopes were fulfilled -- this is a marvelous book, fleshing out the life of Fritz Zwicky, all the way from his birth and early childhood in Bulgaria, through his schooling in Switzerland, to his many years in Southern California. I learned that while he was certainly outspoken -- and was indeed often seen as an obstreperous crank -- he was also a devoted family man, and could be an inspiring teacher (John Huchra, with whom I collaborated on occasion, and who pioneered the use of massive redshift surveys to study galaxy distribution, was a Zwicky student inspired by his teacher's work on galaxy clustering). Zwicky played a big part in the origin of Aerojet, and made notable contributions to America's war effort during WW2. In particular, his research into jet-assisted takeoff fuels and designs saved the lives of many Allied aviators, and played a significant role in winning the war in the Pacific.
Johnson doesn't flinch from Zwicky's sometimes explosive impatience with incompetence. There are some colorful episodes related in the book, most certainly accurate, others perhaps anecdotes embellished by years percolating in memory. It doesn't matter, though, that we can't now tell one from the other. This aspect of Zwicky's personality is important -- it often disrupted the course of his life in science and technology, and we are
probably poorer for the hostility it unfortunately inspired in some of the influential people around him.
Nevertheless, Zwicky's personality shown like a supernova. And just as supernovae enrich their environment and make possible future generations of stars and planets, so did Zwicky enrich astronomy with ideas and techniques,
tools and data, that we still find useful today.
Problems? I noticed only a minor one: In Chapter 12, "Bridges in Space," Johnson doesn't quite clarify to my satisfaction the difference between the intergalactic bridges of stars between galaxies to which Zwicky drew
attention, and the filaments and sheets of galaxies themselves between clusters of galaxies (Huchra and his colleagues later found this sponge-like structure of sheets and filaments to permeate much of the observable
universe). While these features both relate to our latest theories of the formation of structure in galaxies and in the universe, the first is a gravitational "tidal" phenomenon limited in size to a few hundred thousand light years. The second, however, perhaps the result of the big bang itself, now has scales of tens or hundreds of *millions* of light years.
Finally, I should note that Johnson's book is aimed at the layman. It is not, as some have tried to suggest it should have been, a critical historical treatise or an equally serious introduction to some of the more outstanding
aspects of modern astrophysics. It is, however, a highly readable biography of a significant twentieth-century scientist, and I can highly recommend it to anyone seeking -- as I was -- to learn more about Fritz Zwicky.
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