- Pais, Abraham.
The Genius of Science.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
ISBN 0-19-850614-7.
-
In this volume Abraham Pais, distinguished physicist and author of
Subtle Is the Lord,
the definitive scientific biography of Einstein, presents a “portrait
gallery” of eminent twentieth century physicists, including Bohr,
Dirac, Pauli, von Neumann, Rabi, and others. If you skip the
introduction, you may be puzzled at some of the omissions:
Heisenberg, Fermi, and Feynman, among others. Pais wanted to look
behind the physics to the physicist, and thus restricted his
biographies to scientists he personally knew; those not included
simply didn't cross his career path sufficiently to permit sketching
them in adequate detail. Many of the chapters were originally
written for publication in other venues and revised for this book;
consequently the balance of scientific and personal biography varies
substantially among them, as does the length of the pieces: the
chapter on Victor Weisskopf, adapted from an honorary degree
presentation, is a mere two and half pages, while that on George
Eugene Uhlenbeck, based on a lecture from a memorial symposium, is 33
pages long. The scientific focus is very much on quantum theory and
particle physics, and the collected biographies provide an excellent
view of the extent to which researchers groped in the dark before
discovering phenomena which, presented in a modern textbook, seem
obvious in retrospect. One wonders whether the mysteries of
present-day physics will seem as straightforward a century from now.
April 2005 