Quantum - more Amazon reader reviews

Matthew Burns from Dover has this to say about Quantum on the book's Amazon page:

'I really enjoyed reading this book!
Excellent, interesting, story and subject.

I thought Kumar put it across in a very entertaining way, I did not get all of the minutia of the physics but that did not matter, I especially enjoyed the suspense and his sense of humour. I also enjoyed the way the story wove characters and events together, all the way through I was kept interested, he knows how to tell a story.

I got alot out of the information in the book; it filled in gaps for me in my knowledge about the subject as well as providing a really interesting back drop to the stuff I'd done at school. (I liked science till I got to the 6th Form.) The book worked on many different levels, as a history I became aware that there were quite often unintended results or consequences from experiments or ideas, some times others taking up something someone else had accidently stumbled across and looking at it in a new way, I liked that, I found it thought provoking.

This gave me an interesting insight in to the whole unfolding understanding of the science as it happened in time, this was one of the main areas focused on. Another aspect, the personalities and how they interacted what they got up to I enjoyed hearing about their interests and how they lived. 'Painting a picture' of the scientists as people really worked for me. '

Quantum - an Amazon reader review

Amazon customer P.G. Harris has submitted this review of Quantum to the book's page on Amazon.co.uk:

Quantum is the unfinished story of the development of quantum mechanics. Unfinished? Yes, because the question which lies at the centre of the book is not yet resolved.

The story starts in late Victorian times when classic physics seems close to completion, to being able to explain the world fully. There seem to be just a few loose ends to be tied up. However, it is those few loose ends inside the atom, explaining the nature of the electron, being able to account for light behaving both like a particle and a wave etc which lead to the unravelling (at the atomic level) of previous world views.

Through the lives of Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, De Broglie and others we see how diferent strands of quantum theory were hotly contested and how it developed through analysis and synthesis.

One of the most exciting things about the book to me was the rigour and power of true scientific method. Quantum physics, despite being in some ways mind blowingly ethereal is subject to the most searching challenge and detailed research. We see two of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Einstein and Bohr sitting on opposite sides of the dispute, deploying their most powerful destructive intellectual weapons in order to test the veracity of each others ideas. If ever you doudt bthe superiority of genuine science over pseudo Science (are you listening Charles Windsor), read this book.

At the centre of the dispute is the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, at the heart of which is the assertion that reality is not indepedent of measurement. (it would take too long to explain more, but Schrodingers famous cat is involved). Through the book we see Bohr besting Einstein, but one feels that the author is sympathetic towards Einstein and there is a sense of relief at the end of the book that the door remains open for the father of relativity.

Also fascinating is that roughly half of the book is about the major advances in the development of quantum theory in the first three decades of the 20th Century and thereafter debate switched to the interpretation, in a nutshell, is it reality or just a convenient model describing the effect of an underlying reality.

This is no dry science book however, one gets to know the people involved and the story has as its setting the major events of 20th Century history, the first world war, the rise of the nazis, the development of the atomic bomb, and the cold war.

Kumar is a clear and engaging writer, and my only two criticims would be firstly that in his efforts to be comprehensoible he maybe keeps too far away from the hard science at times. Secondly the odd summarising passage, showing briefly what the current state of play was would be helpful.

Overall, definitely recommended, it's a book for everyone, not just the scientifically minded.

Read various other Amazon reader reviews here.

Quantum - a reader's book of the year in the Guardian

Audrey Fogelman from Rutland had this to say about Quantum in the Guardian on 27th December:

'As a fairly innumerate non-scientist, I am perversely drawn to books about maths and science and usually abandon them with ignorance intact. However, Quantum by Manjit Kumar (Icon) is so well written that I now feel I've more or less got particle physics sussed. Quantum transcends genre - it is historical, scientific, biographical, philosophical.'

The full article is here.

Quantum - reviewed in Odyssey magazine, South Africa

'Beautifully written ... a tour de force that covers the fierce debate about the foundations of reality that gripped the scientific community through the 20th century.'

Read the full review - alongside one on another Icon title, Atom - here.

Quantum - one of John Banville's Books of the Year

John Banville, who won the Man Booker prize for his novel The Sea in 2005, chooses Quantum as one of his three books of the year in Australia's The Age newspaper:

'Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality (Icon Books) by Manjit Kumar is one of the best guides yet to the central conundrums of modern physics.'

Quantum - reviewed in the Daily Telegraph

'Admirably ambitious ... for those who already know at least some of the physics and want a brief, non-academic but thorough history of the subject's golden age, it is hard to beat.'

Read the full review here.

Quantum - new reprint jacket

Quantum has just recently been reprinted and we've taken the opportunity to include some of the brilliant press quotes the book has received on the new jacket - and here it is:

Quantum - an exclusive extract

Read the Prologue of Manjit Kumar's Quantum here - click on the book below to zoom in:

Get your own - Open publication

Quantum - reviewed at The Book Depository

'A thrilling account of quantum theory that focusses on the central relationship between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein'

Scroll down on this page to see the full piece.

Quantum - reviewed in the Independent

'Manjit Kumar's Quantum is a super-collider of a book, shaking together an exotic cocktail of free-thinking physicists, tracing their chaotic interactions and seeing what God-particles and black holes fly up out of the maelstrom. He provides probably the most lucid and detailed intellectual history ever written of a body of theory that makes other scientific revolutions look limp-wristed by comparison.'

Read the full review here.

Quantum - reviewed at 26.org.uk

'If you need an improving book for the autumn, with which to impress your friends and family, look no further. Manjit Kumar, who is trained as both a philosopher and a physicist, is eminently qualified to bring off this ambitious attempt to bring the story of the discovery of quantum physics to life for the layperson. He mixes up biography, narrative history and lucid explanation of the science involved to create a highly readable account of one of the most important but impenetrable topics of twentieth century thinking.'

Quantum - reviewed in the Financial Times

'Kumar is an accomplished writer who knows how to separate the excitement of the chase from the sometimes impenetrable mathematics. In Quantum he tells the story of the conflict between two of the most powerful intellects of their day: the hugely famous Einstein and the less well-known but just as brilliant Dane, Niels Bohr.'

Read the full review here.

Quantum - reviewed in the Guardian

Steven Poole reviews Quantum in today's Guardian and calls it:

'An exhaustive and brilliant account of decades of emotionally charged discovery and argument, friendship and rivalry spanning two world wars.'

Read the full review here.

Quantum - reviewed by thebookbag.co.uk

'I found Quantum a fascinating, riveting read. I have not read individual biographies of the scientists concerned beyond what can be found in customary introductory sections of popular science books, and I normally dislike the biographical approach to popular science, but in this case the interweaving of the stories of the scientists and of the science worked brilliantly. Quantum shows not only the body of science, but also its human face. I had a real feeling of observing one of the greatest revolutions of human understanding of the world as it happened; from the personalities of people involved to the administrative details of their employment to the grand sweeps of history that engulfed them. Particularly compelling was how essential for the development of ideas was the communication, co-operation and competition between the scientists: how ideas were bounced between them, reused and refashioned, and how astonishingly creative this cohort of incredibly young men became in the process. ... Quantum is a fascinating, powerful and brilliantly written book that shows one of the most important theories of modern science in the making and discusses its implications for our ideas about the fundamental nature of the world and human knowledge, while presenting intimate and insightful portraits of people who made the science. Highly recommended.'
Magda Healey

Quantum - Amazon.co.uk reader review

Amazon.co.uk customer Jenny Gardener says this (and much more) of Quantum in her review on the site, titled 'Quantum - The Human Story':

'Part social history, part popular science as well as raising questions of a philosophical nature - this makes a cracking read and comes highly recommended.'

Click the Amazon click on the right to read the full review.

Quantum - reviewed in Spiked Online

'How could anyone not believe in the importance of ‘reality’ in developing a scientific theory? The subtleties involved in that apparently simple question are what make the debate between Bohr and Einstein so fascinating and of such importance, a debate expertly told and analysed in a new book by Manjit Kumar. At stake, he argues, were the soul of physics and the nature of reality.'

Read the full review here.

Quantum - reviewed in Scotland on Sunday

'An elegantly written and accessible guide to quantum physics, in which Kumar structures the narrative history around the clash between Einstein and Bohr, and the anxiety that quantum theory "disproved the existence of reality".'

Einstein & Bohr after Solvay 1930

Quantum Lives 6: Erwin Schrodinger

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) spent the Second World War at a safe haven provided by the Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera. A keen amateur mathematician, de Valera brought forward the establishment of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin and appointed Schrödinger to a professorship. The seventeen years he spent in the Irish capital proved to be among the happiest years of his life as he devoted himself increasingly to philosophical questions surrounding the foundations of physics and the relationship between the physical and biological sciences. It was during this period that Schrödinger wrote one of the most famous and influential books of twentieth century science, What is Life? His belief that the essential nature of living organisms could be studied and understood in terms of physical principles convinced some of the brightest young minds to swap physics for the new field of molecular biology. Schrödinger led an unconventional personal life that included sharing a home with his wife and mistress. In March 1956, aged 69, Schrödinger returned to Vienna as professor of theoretical physics. Walter Moore (1989) Schrödinger: Life and Thought is a fascinating tale of a complex man: a scientist, a serial womanizer, and an enthusiastic explorer of Eastern mysticism.

Solvay 1911

Quantum Quotes 4

‘Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the “old one”. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.’

Albert Einstein

Quantum Lives 5: Werner Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) was placed in charge of the German atomic bomb project during the Second World War and became the physicist most feared by allied scientists. In September 1941 Heisenberg visited Bohr in German-occupied Denmark. One evening they went for a stroll in the park next to the institute. It was like old times, but instead of quantum physics Heisenberg raised the possibility of constructing an atomic bomb. Neither man agreed later on who said what. Was Heisenberg trying to open a channel of communication or was he trying to elicit information about the status of the allied atomic bomb? Whatever the truth of the matter, it has been the subject of speculation ever since and forms the basis of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, their friendship effectively ended that day. After the war, Heisenberg was arrested and interned in a secluded farmhouse in Britain for six months with other leading members of the Germany’s atom bomb programme. David C. Cassidy (1992) Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg is the definitive biography that charts the highs and lows in the life of this flawed genius. Cassidy reconstructs Heisenberg’s role in the German atomic bomb project and the ill-conceived visit to see Bohr. Although highly respected and regarded as one of the greatest theorists of the twentieth century, Cassidy’s majestic work reveals exactly why Heisenberg never enjoyed the same degree of affection from his colleagues as Pauli despite lacking his friend’s bite. After the war and Planck’s death, Heisenberg became a leading spokesman for German science.

Quantum Lives 4: Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) married Käthe Deppner, a twenty-three year-old dancer and actress, in December 1929. The marriage ended within a year. The fact that she left him for a chemist particularly rankled Pauli: ‘Had she taken a bullfighter I would have understood,’ he said, ‘but an ordinary chemist?’ Pauli began to drink heavily and at the behest of his father sought the help of the celebrated psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Initially placing him in the care of a young assistant, Jung later analyzed some four hundred of Pauli’s dreams and the pair remained in touch for a quarter of a century. In September 1931, Pauli wrote: ‘With women and me things don’t work out at all, and probably it also will never succeed again. This, I am afraid, I have to live with, but it is not always easy. I am somewhat afraid that in getting older I will feel increasingly lonely. The eternal soliloquy is so tiresome.’ Three years later he remarried and this time the union lasted until his death.
If his life fell apart together with his first marriage, Pauli’s physics did not. In 1930 he made the first tentative suggestion that there existed an undiscovered particle that was emitted during the loss of a beta particle by a radioactive nucleus. Pauli’s hypothetical particle had to have no charge and almost no mass; he later described it as ‘that foolish child of the crisis of my life’. Christened the neutrino, Pauli lived long enough to see its experimental confirmation in 1956. As he lay dying in hospital, Pauli was asked if there was someone he would like to talk with. Niels Bohr came the reply. Charles P. Enz (2002) No Time to be Brief: A scientific biography of Wolfgang Pauli contains plenty of biographical material, but its intended readership is one with a physics background. Chapter 11, Abraham Pais (2000) The Genius of Science: A portrait gallery of twentieth-century physicists is a warm, insightful, and highly readable recollection of the man and his science by an admirer who knew him well.

Quantum Lives 3: Max Born

Max Born (1882–1970) spent seventeen years, from 1936 to 1953, as the Tait professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University quietly teaching undergraduates and supervising graduate students. Max Born (2005) The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times with a commentary by Born offers a rare glimpse into the personal, scientific, and social concerns of two men as the events of the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century unfolded. When in 1953 Born retired and returned to Germany to live in a small spa town near Göttingen, Einstein wrote to him: ‘If anyone can be held responsible for the fact that you are migrating back to the land of the mass-murderers of our kinsmen, it is certainly your adopted fatherland – universally notorious for its parsimony.’ The restoration of confiscated property and his pension by the Federal German government made Born’s homecoming all the more attractive. In the last decade of his life, he became increasing active in discussions surrounding the social responsibilities of scientists and in July 1955 signed a declaration condemning the development of atomic weapons. Written for his own family rather than for publication, Born (1978) My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate is a vivid account of his life until the outbreak of the Second World War. Nancy Thorndike Greenspan (2005) The End of The Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born is a sensitive and astute portrait of a man later overshadowed by his more famous colleagues.

Oppenheimer on The Golden Age of the Quantum

'Our understanding of atomic physics, of what we call the quantum theory of atomic systems, had its origins at the turn of the century and its great synthesis and resolutions in the 1920s.It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man. It involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands, though from first to last the deeply creative and subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened, and finally transmuted the enterprise. It was a period of patient work in the laboratory, of crucial experiments and daring action, of many false starts and many untenable conjectures. It was a time of earnest correspondence and hurried conferences, of debate, criticism, and brilliant mathematical improvisation. For those who participated it was a time of creation. There was terror as well as exaltation in their new insight.'

Robert Oppenheimer

Solvay 1930: Einstein & Bohr

Solvay 1927

This photograph of those gathered at the fifth Solvay conference on ‘Electrons and Photons’, held in Brussels from 24 to 29 October 1927, encapsulates the story of the most dramatic period in the history of physics. With seventeen of the twenty-nine invited eventually earning a Nobel Prize, the conference was one of the most spectacular meetings of minds ever held. It marked the end of a golden age of physics, an era of scientific creativity unparalleled since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century led by Galileo and Newton.

Eight men and one woman are seated in the front row, six have Nobel Prizes in either physics or chemistry. The woman has two, one for physics awarded in 1903 and another for chemistry in 1911. Her name: Marie Curie. It was Max Planck, sitting on Curie's right, holding his hat and cigar, who discovered the quantum.

In the centre, the place of honour, sits another Nobel laureate, the most celebrated scientist since the age of Newton: Albert Einstein. Looking straight ahead, gripping the chair with his right hand, he seems ill at ease. Is it the winged collar and tie that are causing him discomfort, or what he has heard during the preceding week? At the end of the second row, on the right, is Niels Bohr looking relaxed with a half-whimsical smile. It had been a good conference for him. Nevertheless, Bohr would be returning to Denmark disappointed that he had failed to convince Einstein to adopt his Copenhagen interpretation of what quantum mechanics revealed about the nature of reality.

Instead of yielding, Einstein had spent the week attempting to show that quantum mechanics was inconsistent, that Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation was flawed. Einstein said years later that ‘this theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoic, concocted of incoherent elements of thoughts’.

C.P. Snow on the Einstein-Bohr Debate

'The arguments on both sides are most beautiful and subtle....No more profound intellectual debate has ever been conducted - and, since they were both men of the loftiest spirit, it was conducted with noble feeling on both sides. If two men are going to disagree, on the subject of most ultimate concern to them both, then that is the way to do it. It is a pity that the debate, because of its nature, can't be common currency.'

C.P. Snow in Variety of Men: Statesmen, scientists, writers

Quantum Quotes 3

‘For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.’

Niels Bohr

Quantum Quotes 2

‘It was as if the grounds had been pulled out from under one with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.’

Albert Einstein