Science
-
Oppenheimer. Portrait of an Enigma, Jeremy Bernstein (ISBN 978-1-56663-569-1, Ivan R. Dee)
The third Oppenheimer biography I have read. Compared to the other 2 this is a very brief one. Jeremy Bernstein is a physicist turned science writer who wrote many biographies for The New Yorker. In the introduction of the book he writes he never got around to writing a biography of Oppenheimer for The New…
-
The Mystique of Mathematical Formulae
‘One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.‘― Heinrich Herz
-
Dark Sun. The making of the hydrogen bomb, Richard Rhodes (ISBN 9780684824147, Simon & Schuster)
After having read ‘The making of the atomic bomb’ by Richard Rhodes I also had to read this book. It didn’t win the Pulitzer prize although it did make the short list for it. Compared to the award winning ‘The making of the atomic bomb’ I have to agree this book is not as excellent…
-
Charles Lauritsen on Oppenheimer
‘This man was unbelievable. He always gave you the answer before you had time to formulate the question.‘― Charles Lauritsen
-
Return of the Stone Age
‘The Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science.‘― Winston Churchill
-
Einstein. His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (ISBN 9780743264747, Simon & Schuster)
A ‘new’ biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson came out in 2007. The first biography I read from Isaacson was the one of Steve Jobs which actually came out later, in 2011. I enjoyed the Steve Jobs biography and by looking for other books by Isaacson I came across this Einstein biography. I bought the…
-
Schrödinger’s kittens and the search for reality, John Gribbin (ISBN 9781857994025, Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
After reading In Search of Schrödinger’s cat by John Gribbin I decided to also read this sequel not really knowing what to expect. His first book is a more or less traditional explanation of quantum mechanics and its bizarre description of reality. Ever since its conception physicists and philosophers have been struggling with the interpretation…
-
Piet Vroon: From Bestselling Author to Tragic Story
I read this book a little while ago in October mainly because it was short and I was behind on my reading target for 2025. It is barely 50 pages thick and I read a couple of other books by Piet Vroon long ago that I liked very much. Unfortunately, the quality of the book…
-
The Five Ages of the Universe, Fred Adams, Greg Laughlin (ISBN 978-0-684-86576-8, Simon & Schuster)
I read this book a while ago. It came out in 1999 but I came across a reference to it in another book. This book is a ‘biography’ of the universe from the beginning with the big bang until its speculatvie end after 10150 years. It is based on our current understanding of the laws…
Response 418 