M-History Without the M |
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Strung out across the universe |
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A maverick's quest |
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Shelf life |
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Quantum theory: no problem |
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Life in landscape of possibilities |
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Only the longest threads |
How do theoretical physicists think? Tasneem Zehra Husain knows. She knows their purpose, feels their passions, articulates their frustrations, shares their triumphs. A book within a book, written with a keen ear for the language and idiom of Restoration and Victorian England, blends the stories of Newton's gravity and Maxwell's electromagnetism. Then to New York in 1921 and the New World of Albert Einstein's Relativity, and on to 1930s Copenhagen for the Bohr interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and its devastating effect on human understanding of the physical universe. Abdus Salam on Symmetry in a letter to his children written on a bench in the park at Miramare will evoke bitter-sweet memories for those of us who spent part of our youth in that most melancholy town of Trieste. Husain ends with a thoughtful and knowledgeable finale on Superstrings and the quest for the ultimate theory, providing a refreshing change from the mindless and crass evaluations of internet wannabes and crackpots that theoretical physics uniquely attracts. Through the device of fiction Only the Longest Threads communicates the history of physical thought--its roots in inquisitiveness and essential disinterest in outcome--with greater clarity than any popular science text. |
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