Biography
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Evariste Galois. 1811-1832, Laura Toti Rigatelli (ISBN 978-3-7643-5410-7, Birkhäuser)
I found this biography of Evariste Galois after reading about him in Eric Temple Bell’s Men of Mathematics. It is part of the Vita Mathematica series of the publisher with biographies of mathematicians, most of them published in German. The author is an Italian professor in mathematics with a special interest in the history of…
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Richard Feynman. A Life in Science, John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin (ISBN 978-1-78578-372-2, Iconbooks)
During my physics studies at university I became a fan of Feynman. His path integral formulation of quantum mechanics was a revelation after years of plodding through the standard formalisms by Heisenberg and Schrödinger and the mists surrounding the question what it all meant physically. Especially the fact that this approach was also applicable to…
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Einstein’s Wife. The Real Story of Mileva Einstein-Maric, Allen Chesterton & David Cassidy (ISBN 9780262538978, MIT Press)
I read about this book in the paper when it came out in 2020 but didn’t buy it immediately. Then, not so long ago I decided to buy and read the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson and I also got this book about Mileva Maric which I read first. Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife was…
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Lise Meitner. A Life in Physics, Ruth Lewin Sime (ISBN 978-0-520-20860-5, University of California Press)
This is the second biography of Lise Meitner I read. After reading the biography by Patricia Rife I was at first hesitant to also go and read this book by Ruth Lewin Sime. But after finishing the book I have to say it was well worth every minute. Where the biography of Patricia Rife focused…
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Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, Patricia Rife (ISBN 978-0817637323, Birkhäuser)
A very nice biography about one of the ‘forgotten’ women of science. I came across a reference to this book somewhere and decided to read it as part of my ‘atomic’ theme. It also fits nicely into a series of books I am reading about women scientists. I had read the excellent ‘The making of…
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Through rugged ways to the stars, Harlow Shapley (ISBN 9781124074719, Charles Scribner’s Sons)
This is the autobiography of Harlow Shapley, the man who discovered size of the milky way and the place of our sun in it. Shapley considered the discovery that our sun was not in the center of the milky way as his most important contribution to our world view because it was more or less…
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Napoleon. Deel 2: van Keizer tot mythe, Johan op de Beeck (ISBN , 9789022329979, Manteau)
New summer holiday so time to re read part 2 of the Napoleon biography from Johan op de Beeck. Although equally good as part 1 this book was a bit harder to get through the second time. It has not so much to do with the writing but all the more with the events in…
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American Prometheus. The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird, Martin Sherwin (ISBN 9780375726262, Vintage Books)
The pulitzer prize winning biography of Robert Oppenheimer. The one on which the Oppenheimer movie from 2023 is based. I read the book after seeing the movie. The main reason being I didn’t have the book yet and it took some time before it got delivered. Instead I read the biography by Pais first before…
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Oppenheimer
After having read the Oppenheimer biography from Abraham Pais I felt sufficiently prepared to go and watch the movie. I went to see it with my wife in a week that both kids were not at home. It was a bit of a last minute decision during an evening in the week. Arriving at the…
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J. Robert Oppenheimer. A Life, Abraham Pais (ISBN 9780195327120, Oxford University Press)
With the Oppenheimer movie coming out I decided to read a biography first. I didn’t have the one from Kai Bird on which the movie is based (has been rectified in the mean time) but I did have 3 other books on Oppenheimer patiently lying in the library waiting to be read. After googling a…
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