Einstein Defiant
Genius Versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist." -Albert Einstein
A scandal hovers over the history of 20th century physics. Albert Einstein -- the century's greatest physicist -- was never able to come to terms with quantum mechanics, the century's greatest theoretical achievement. For physicists who routinely use both quantum laws and Einstein's ideas, this contradiction can be almost too embarrassing to dwell on. Yet Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics and he spent many years preaching the quantum's importance and its revolutionary nature.
The Danish genius Neils Bohr was another founder of quantum physics. He had managed to solve one of the few physics problems that Einstein ever shied away from, linking quantum mathematics with a new model of the atom. This leap immediately yielded results that explained electron behavior and the periodic table of the elements.
Despite their mutual appreciation of the quantum's importance, these two giants of modern physics never agreed on the fundamentals of their work. In fact, they clashed repeatedly throughout the 1920s, arguing first over Einstein's theory of "light quanta"(photons), then over Niels Bohr's short-lived theory that denied the conservation of energy at the quantum level, and climactically over the new quantum mechanics that Bohr enthusiastically embraced and Einstein stubbornly defied.
This contest of visions stripped the scientific imagination naked. Einstein was a staunch realist, demanding to know the physical reasons behind physical events. At odds with this approach was Bohr's more pragmatic perspective that favored theories that worked, even if he might not have a corresponding explanation of the underlying reality. Powerful and illuminating, Einstein Defiant is the first book to capture the soul and the science that inspired this dramatic duel, revealing the personalities and the passions -- and, in the end, what was at stake for the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Albert Einstein sought throughout his career to understand the ways of "the Old One," his nickname for the deity. Not one to chase after theory just because the math worked, Einstein adopted an equation like E = mc2 only if he could demonstrate how it played out in the physical world. Nor did he believe that the Old One was capricious, letting a photon of light masquerade as a particle one moment, as a wave the next. Einstein always sought to explain an unambiguous, consistent reality. As author Bolles (The Ice Finders, etc.) shows, this placed him at loggerheads with Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen school of quantum physics. Bohr was the pragmatist to Einstein's purist, looking for theories that worked, whether or not they made sense. Bolles conjures up the lost world of Europe between the wars, an era when readers would snatch up newspapers with Einstein's latest paper printed on the front page. In addition to his flair for bringing to life the cultural background of Einstein and Bohr's scientific battle (with occasional slips: Schoenberg did not compose the opera Wozzeck), Bolles exhibits a marvelous facility in explaining the intricacies of relativity and the world inside the atom. Readers who can never keep the three B's Bohr, Born and de Broglie straight will know what their roles were in 20th-century physics by the end of the book, which is highly recommended for science buffs as well as readers of biography and cultural history. (On sale Apr. 6)
