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Overview
"...heartily recommended as being as fine an example as one can hope to find of expository writing on science. The profiles of the giants of modern science, not to mention the wonderful accounts of earlier titans of physics, certainly make the book a best-buy on the popular science shelf." -NEW SCIENTIST"an eclectic collection of essays...a well written work, as one expect(s) from a writer of Bernsteins caliber; recommended..." -LIBRARY JOURNAL
One of the best-known essayists on science, physicist Jeremy Bernstein, here presents his latest collection of work. Drawn from over ten years of writing for magazines such as The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and Scientific American, these essays provide illuminating accounts of the lives of this century's most important scientists and the value of their work.
Synopsis
Here are fifteen pieces on the history and personalities of physics and related fields, from the well-known physicist and essayist Jeremy Bernstein. The pieces in this collection include profiles of Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, the linguist Hans Eberstark, and Julian Schwinger; essays on thought experiments, Einstein's scientific legacy, the early debate on black holes, and the cold fusion controversy; and some humorous short fiction. Most of this work has appeared in the New Yorker, Scientific American, or The Atlantic Monthly.
Library Journal
Many readers will recognize Bernstein (Cranks, Quarks & the Cosmos, LJ 1/93) as the noted science essayist for the New Yorker for the past 30 years. This is an eclectic collection of 17 essays focusing 20th-century physics and physicists, nearly all of which have previously appeared in either the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, or Scientific American. Each essay is updated with either an introduction or postscript rather than a general preface, and the last four are humorous fictional accounts of academic life much in the vein of David Lodge's Small World (Warner, 1991). A well written work, as one expect from a writer of Bernstein's caliber; recommended for public libraries.James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago