Faust In Copenhagen

Oct 26, 2024 1:26 AM

Author:Gino Segrè

Faust In Copenhagen

In 1932, the so-called annus mirabilis of modern physics, a group of scientists gathered in Copenhagen for a week-long conference on the extraordinary new work that was taking place in laboratories across the world; work that would ultimately lead to the development of nuclear weapons and the ensuing international power struggles.

Segrè's erudite and impressive account explores this crucial moment in history through the lives and careers of seven physicists sitting in the front row of the Copenhagen meeting. Six of them were already in the pantheon of genius while the seventh - Max Delbrück - was the author of a skit performed at the conference that lightly parodied the struggle between the old and new theories of physics and eerily foreshadowed the events that were to unfold in the struggle between peaceful uses of scientific discovery and destructive ones.

Reviews

Gripping and absorbing... Faust in Copenhagen is written with a style and skill that makes it an early contender for Science book of the year...one of the best I have read in a long time, and which can be whole heartedly recommended

—— Literary Review

Lively and accessible

—— New Humanist

[Segrè] demonstrates a knack for explaining weird conundrums and a humane sympathy for the wrong turnings and moral difficulties of his heroes

—— Steven Poole , Guardian

Segrè unravels the tensions and conflicts within the group, both personal and scientific, and of the different approaches to the task of making mathematical sense of the weirdness of the subatomic world

—— Kenan Malik , Daily Telegraph

Faust in Copenhagen provides an engaging glimpse of the process of scientific discovery

—— Sunday Telegraph

An engaging romp through the strange world of the quantum and its creaters

—— BBC History Magazine

Prodigiously illustrated and beautifully designed... I cannot think of a better, or simpler, introduction to science

—— Guardian

This book may be exactly what's needed to increase science literacy for readers of all ages

—— Publishers Weekly

The text is persuasive whatever one's age ... the chapter on rainbows has the clearest explanation of how they appear that I've ever seen

—— Financial Times

This book is primarily aimed at teenagers, but plenty of adults will get a kick out of it too...McKean's drawings bring the text to life brilliantly ... Dawkins writes convincingly about everything from chemistry to statistics

—— Independent on Sunday

Dawkins uses a simple, brilliant technique highly appealing to young and old

—— The Washington Post

Less folksy and biographical than Bill Bryson, less zany than a Bluffer's Guide. But many a bang for your buck, washed down with quotations from the greats ... Potter has an engaging style

—— Daily Mail

With marvellous clarity, compassion, erudition, humour and open-mindedness, Potter blasts us through the vast vacuum of space

—— Daily Telegraph

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