The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science ebook

by Sheilla Jones

Sheilla Jones Professionals and Academics English

The regression of science The quantum showdown The birth of the quantum A place to belong Building a foundation The cost of compromise Taking a new path Only what the eye can see The emergence of the boys' club The Go?ttingen gospel A meeting of minds Shock waves Drawing the battle lines Dark night of the scientific soul Solvay prelude Coming undone. ISBN: 9783899427448 (alk. paper) ISBN: 9783899427448 Author: Karsch, Margret, 1974- Publication & Distribution: Bielefeld. Transcript, (c)2007 2. Teaching elementary physical education : strategies for the classroom teacher Peter Hastie, Ellen Martin.

The Quantum Ten illuminates a neglected chapter in the history of physics, and Jones tells the story with enthusiasm .

The Quantum Ten illuminates a neglected chapter in the history of physics, and Jones tells the story with enthusiasm and flair. Above all, she gives the reader a real feeling for the personalities behind the science, a look at the minds of 10 passionate thinkers who changed our world forever. - The Globe and Mail

Other readers will always be interested in your opinion of the books you've read. Whether you've loved the book or not, if you give your honest and detailed thoughts then people will find new books that are right for them.

Other readers will always be interested in your opinion of the books you've read. Картер . Хайфилд Р. (Carter . Highfield . Rok: 1998. Język: russian, english.

Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with the .

Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with the mysteries of the new science of the quantum, along with a powerful supporting cast of famous (and not so famous) colleagues. Books related to The Quantum Ten : A Story Of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, And Science. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.

It's the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a.Books related to The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science.

It's the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a handful of men fired by ambition, philosophical conflicts and personal agendas. Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with the mysteries of the new science of the quantum, along with a powerful supporting cast of famous (and not so famous) colleagues. Jones weaves together the personal and the scientific in a heartwarming-and heartbreaking-story of the men who struggled to create quantum physics: a story of passion, tragedy, ambition and science.

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Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-316) and index

Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-316) and index. The regression of science - The quantum showdown - The birth of the quantum - A place to belong - Building a foundation - The cost of compromise - Taking a new path - Only what the eye can see - The emergence of the boys' club - The Göttingen gospel - A. Meeting of minds - Shock waves - Drawing the battle lines - Dark night of the scientific soul - Solvay prelude - Coming undone - Picking up the pieces - Quantum confusion.

Theoretical physics is in trouble. At least thats the impression youd get from reading a spate of recent books on the continued failure to resolve the 80-year-old problem of unifying the classical and quantum worlds. Its the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a handful of men fired by ambition, philosophical conflicts and personal agendas.

The Quantum Ten book. I'm no physicist but Sheila Jones made the story interesting, esp her ability to discuss the personalities involved in these meetings. Theoretical physics is in trouble. A highly recommended read.

Theoretical physics is in trouble. At least that's the impression you'd get from reading a spate of recent books on the continued failure to resolve the 80-year-old problem of unifying the classical and quantum worlds. The seeds of this problem were sewn eighty years ago when a dramatic revolution in physics reached a climax at the 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels. It's the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a handful of men fired by ambition, philosophical conflicts and personal agendas. Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with the mysteries of the new science of the quantum, along with a powerful supporting cast of famous (and not so famous) colleagues. The Brussels conference was the first time so many of the "quantum ten" had been in the same place: Albert Einstein, the lone wolf; Niels Bohr, the obsessive but gentlemanly father figure; Max Born, the anxious hypochondriac; Werner Heisenberg, the intensely ambitious one; Wolfgang Pauli, the sharp-tongued critic with a dark side; Paul Dirac, the silent Englishman; Erwin Schrödinger, the enthusiastic womanizer; Prince Louis de Broglie, the French aristocrat; and Paul Ehrenfest, who was witness to it all. Pascual Jordan, the ardent Aryan nationalist, came uninvited. This is the story of quantum physics that has never been told, an equation-free investigation into the turbulent development of the new science and its very fallible creators, including little-known details of the personal relationship between the deeply troubled Ehrenfest and his dear friend Albert Einstein. Jones weaves together the personal and the scientific in a heartwarming--and heartbreaking--story of the men who struggled to create quantum physics: a story of passion, tragedy, ambition and science.

Saithinin

In my 57 years, I have never read a book quite like this. If you are a simple aficionado of physics (like myself), perhaps having taken physics and P-Chem many years ago, you will be thrilled to see figures like Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and De Broglie come to life. Better yet, Sheilla Jones traces a path from the earliest hints of quantum behavior (Boltzmann, Planck) to the full-fledged theories and battles over the deepest nature of the subatomic world around us—a truly mysterious nature that she caps off with a pleasing reveal at the end. Moreover, Jones deftly humanizes these larger than life scientists, bringing us into their homes and into their trials and tribulations which, to my surprise, are not so different from ours today. One tiny annoyance is that, in weaving together the different pieces of this story, Jones jumps around in time quite a bit (just like we jump around in space) so you need to pay attention! But if you do, you will be rewarded with a front row seat at perhaps the greatest spectacle in human history—an intellectual free-for-all wherein us descendants of Neanderthals came to an understanding of the wave-particle duality that sits at the deepest levels of physical reality, buried inside a cloud of electron probabilities. I hope your soul will be warmed by this triumph of better human nature, a triumph forged with little heed to the brutish turmoil that percolated across continents and time in the early twentieth century.

Kakashkaliandiia

I have not read this book in its entirety, so please keep that in mind regarding this review. I did want to point out one glaring mistake which I discovered right away. Wolfgang Pauli was famous for the "Pauli Effect", in which things would breakdown in his presence for no explicable reason. And that is the key -- "for no explicable reason". The author, however, chalks up this whole phenomenon -- experienced by many scientists and friends who knew Pauli -- to physical clumsiness. There is no evidence that Pauli was physically clumsy. The Pauli Effect was infamous because it happened without any physical association -- and that's exactly what made it so strange and memorable. This glaring misinterpretation on the part of the author puts her capacity for fundamental accuracy into question.

Niwield

Sheilla Jones really nailed the human stories, interactions, and challenges going on at the beginning of the 1900s with the inception of the notions of quantum mechanics, up through the elucidation and refinement of various models, and the personalities who created them. An excellent read which gives a better understanding of the theories and persuasions underpinning the formulation of QM.

Felhann

Extremely well written book. You end up knowing all of these physicists very well. A watershed moment and worthy of such attention. Hope the author writes more physics books.

Eyalanev

We think of science and scientists being stoic and objective, but this intriguing true story often sounds more like a soap opera script. It gives me pause to think that much of what we think we know about quantum physics could be completely wrong, and for all of the same reasons that we see in everyday politics.

My only complaint is that the chapters could have been organized a bit better. They seemed to go on beyond the given topic at times.

Arihelm

This was definitely worth the read. With great determination, but through a narration lacking strong cohesiveness, Jones tries hard to capture the turbulent nascent years of the new quantum physics as its startling revelations unfolded in the 1920s. We witness the brilliant new proponents emerge, roam through the leading European institutes and periodically assemble; mostly young physicists; many in their 20's. Their insights into the quantum "action" occurring within the atom deeply changed our world view forever, more so even than Einstein's relativity. Physics changed, philosophy changed, and the subatomic sea in which we reside was exposed as almost unimaginably strange and unfamiliar in its operation. With revelations came also a kind of darkness: the depths of atoms went from the unknown to the unknowable. Awful stress, soul-searching, and even suicides resulted.*

The effort to show the personalities at play here is rewarding and the characters do come somewhat to life (or even death). The story is also helpful in that we get a good flavor of the scientific search in progress. Many important battles are described, e.g.: a man agonizing for years to reach an true understanding (e.g. Bohr); one hitting upon a massively simplifying method (Schrödinger); and another articulating a correct off-the-wall prediction (de Broglie) that helped sort things out. We also get to know their ernest competitions to be right, or at least to have the most useful idea, fought through scientific thrusts and parries inside letters, lectures, and papers.

As many other reviewers comment, Jones's tale is not put together in a way that works very well, due to the frequent skipping back and forth in time and between institutes. A single chronology might have been better, but one also senses that this method would have precluded the insertion of the background factors of each man's life, factors which illuminate their individually unique struggles. But what I felt most disappointed with was the lack of a summing-up at the end, after that long rough ride of a decade.

In the tale, I would have enjoyed hearing less about the domestic and career-searching angst of these men, since it really didn't connect that well with their individual science views, in preference to hearing more of the intellectual details relating to the course of the competitive progress toward the new science. For example, the theme of how one idea may prevail over another is constantly present in the book and heavily treated in details, but finally given very scant conclusions at the end as to how well it all went, with little modern retrospective. The epilogue jumps a gap from 1927 to 2005 so as to end not with how the Copenhagen School faired (it prevailed), but rather an allusion to the similar messy world-view disorientations we are now facing (potentially) from string theory.
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*I also recommend Pais' "The Genius of Science" to gain a heightened appreciation of the intellectual bravery required of the theorists of the times to grapple with what they were learning.

The_NiGGa

If you are interested in science, or simply, if you are interested in how geniuses carry on with their lives, this is the book for you. Author Jones carries you with a profound knowledge of the matter from a page to the next making it very difficult to stop reading. Her picture of many (much more than ten) human characters trying to understand how the physical world works and trying to be the ones that reach that understanding ahead of others is simply irresistible.