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The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn
A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles—one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.
In 1935, in what would become the most cited of all of his papers, Albert Einstein showed that quantum mechanics predicted such a correlation, which he dubbed “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this spooky correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence wasn’t firmly established until 1964, in a groundbreaking paper by the Irish physicist John Bell. What happened during those years and what has happened since to refine the understanding of this phenomenon is the fascinating story told here.
We move from a coffee shop in Zurich, where Einstein and Max von Laue discuss the madness of quantum theory, to a bar in Brazil, as David Bohm and Richard Feynman chat over cervejas . We travel to the campuses of American universities—from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Berkeley to the Princeton of Einstein and Bohm to Bell’s Stanford sabbatical—and we visit centers of European Copenhagen, home to Bohr’s famous institute, and Munich, where Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli picnic on cheese and heady discussions of electron orbits.
Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Louisa Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing their own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. Here are Bohr and Einstein clashing, and Heisenberg and Pauli deciding which mysteries to pursue. We see Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie pave the way for Bell, whose work is here given a long-overdue revisiting. And with his characteristic matter-of-fact eloquence, Richard Feynman challenges his contemporaries to make something of this entanglement.
In 1935, in what would become the most cited of all of his papers, Albert Einstein showed that quantum mechanics predicted such a correlation, which he dubbed “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this spooky correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence wasn’t firmly established until 1964, in a groundbreaking paper by the Irish physicist John Bell. What happened during those years and what has happened since to refine the understanding of this phenomenon is the fascinating story told here.
We move from a coffee shop in Zurich, where Einstein and Max von Laue discuss the madness of quantum theory, to a bar in Brazil, as David Bohm and Richard Feynman chat over cervejas . We travel to the campuses of American universities—from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Berkeley to the Princeton of Einstein and Bohm to Bell’s Stanford sabbatical—and we visit centers of European Copenhagen, home to Bohr’s famous institute, and Munich, where Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli picnic on cheese and heady discussions of electron orbits.
Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Louisa Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing their own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. Here are Bohr and Einstein clashing, and Heisenberg and Pauli deciding which mysteries to pursue. We see Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie pave the way for Bell, whose work is here given a long-overdue revisiting. And with his characteristic matter-of-fact eloquence, Richard Feynman challenges his contemporaries to make something of this entanglement.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
January 18, 2022
So it all started with a schism. It started with a divergence, an unwillingness, a denial or acceptance of quantised motion, statistical causality, and the ultimate 'to be or not to be' question of all time. The answer is apparently, 'I will be when you watch me'. Perhaps we should all adopt this stance, at the risk of seeming like phonies. Which is to say elementary particles are phonies, the original tricksters. Which begs the question, wherein lies reality? Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen famously tried to find out by describing an 'element of physical reality' and the 'completeness' of a physical theory. Which is to say, they demanded the existence of on observer-independent reality and begged 'to thine own self be true.' Apparently, reality says 'nope, can't, won't.' Or so it has been established by the quantum mechanics dogma.
Until the ever-charming, ever-modest Bell came along and thought 'the fault, dear Bohr, is not in our particles, but in ourselves.' And thus began the age of entanglement, an epic saga of fights, tears, disagreements, warm embraces, courtship, friendship, bitterness and love.
For all practical purposes, quantum mechanics is complete. But perhaps that's what has led physics into an existential crisis, wrongly applied Bayesian inference and this relentless quest for practicality. Entanglement itself became more 'useful' after it was found to have practical applications. As much as science bros like to deny politics, the truth is that profit seeking market society has also influenced all sorts of scientific and technological development. Perhaps even a quantum mechanical ontological statement, when it comes, will have to account for this user based interface. Maybe we do change and evolve and even cause the world to exist as we change, evolve and exist in it ourselves. However, that's too antropocentric for my liking.
It all was, it is, anathema.
Also, contrary to most reviewers here, I loved the added dialogues and story-telling. It added, shall I say, 'an element of reality.' It's the At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails of physics. And it's well suited for a layman as well as an expert, and that's a huge accomplishment in my opinion.
Until the ever-charming, ever-modest Bell came along and thought 'the fault, dear Bohr, is not in our particles, but in ourselves.' And thus began the age of entanglement, an epic saga of fights, tears, disagreements, warm embraces, courtship, friendship, bitterness and love.
For all practical purposes, quantum mechanics is complete. But perhaps that's what has led physics into an existential crisis, wrongly applied Bayesian inference and this relentless quest for practicality. Entanglement itself became more 'useful' after it was found to have practical applications. As much as science bros like to deny politics, the truth is that profit seeking market society has also influenced all sorts of scientific and technological development. Perhaps even a quantum mechanical ontological statement, when it comes, will have to account for this user based interface. Maybe we do change and evolve and even cause the world to exist as we change, evolve and exist in it ourselves. However, that's too antropocentric for my liking.
It all was, it is, anathema.
Also, contrary to most reviewers here, I loved the added dialogues and story-telling. It added, shall I say, 'an element of reality.' It's the At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails of physics. And it's well suited for a layman as well as an expert, and that's a huge accomplishment in my opinion.
June 17, 2016
Gilder chose an interesting way to relate material that is often unrelatable. Many famous physicists are known for asserting that no one understands quantum physics. My favorite Feynman quote is, "There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
Considering this, Gilder did a truly fantastic job of walking the reader through the history of the entanglement. Told using evidence such as memoirs, correspondence, and notes, this book reads almost like historical fiction. And this story was beautifully told. I am still waiting for a book that makes it perfectly clear. But so is everyone else......
Considering this, Gilder did a truly fantastic job of walking the reader through the history of the entanglement. Told using evidence such as memoirs, correspondence, and notes, this book reads almost like historical fiction. And this story was beautifully told. I am still waiting for a book that makes it perfectly clear. But so is everyone else......
July 10, 2009
I'm sorry to say I abandoned this book for something as ridiculous as the way it was written. I'm sorry, because the subject is fascinating; and sorry because Louise Gilder is obviously an intelligent scholar. But for some reason she decided to write this history as a series of conversations – and it's this determined quirk that put my teeth on edge from the start. Here's an example from p. 103:
"We have always said so glibly," Heisenberg told his frustration, or the trees, or Bohr, or Einstein, "that the path of the electron in the cloud chamber can be observed." He turned to see his footprints among the frost, and he thought of the electron shooting through the cloud chamber, leaving its footprints of dew behind, small condensed clouds. "But perhaps," he continued slowly, "what we really observed was something much less. Perhaps" – he was walking faster now, his breath, like the electron, leaving clouds behind him....
Yikes. This isn't history; it's an awkward fictionalization, a conceit that collapses science into an entangled pile of clichés.
"We have always said so glibly," Heisenberg told his frustration, or the trees, or Bohr, or Einstein, "that the path of the electron in the cloud chamber can be observed." He turned to see his footprints among the frost, and he thought of the electron shooting through the cloud chamber, leaving its footprints of dew behind, small condensed clouds. "But perhaps," he continued slowly, "what we really observed was something much less. Perhaps" – he was walking faster now, his breath, like the electron, leaving clouds behind him....
Yikes. This isn't history; it's an awkward fictionalization, a conceit that collapses science into an entangled pile of clichés.
January 27, 2009
In The Age of Entanglement, Louisa Gilder sketches and humanizes one of the most baffling ideas of modern science -- the concept of entanglement in quantum mechanics. Einstein famously called entanglement "spooky action-at-a distance, and battled fruitlessly for the last two decades of his life to rebut it. Entanglement implies that particles, even if separated by large distances, can "communicate" with each other simultaneously. It also implies that photons, electrons, atoms, indeed all matter, including such things as baseballs and cars, behave as both particles and waves, that particles can just pop into existence, and that things may have no reality until measured or observed. These concepts fly in the face of many of the underlying pillars of classical physics, as well as some of the most firmly rooted ideas of our ordinary life, such as causation, the flow of time, and that cause precedes effect. Quantum mechanics is full of weirdness, such as faster than light propagation of information and that two observers can each observe the same event as occurring before the other observer observes it.
In In The Age of Entanglement, Gilder illuminates entanglement through imagined or reconstructed conversations between the physicists who created the edifice of quantum mechanics. Using the diaries, notebooks, books and recollections of those physicists and their friends, collegues and families, Gilder draws a compelling picture of the history of an idea and the frustration and angst it caused in those who developed it.
The weirdness of quantum mechanics and its impact on the psyches of those who tried to understand it, which is a central idea of this book, is well summed up by what Richard Feynman had to say in an oft-quoted remark: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Feynman explained that in quantum mechanics, "our imagination is stretched to the utmost -- not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." Warning that these things are difficult to understand (surely an understantement) Feynman said:
"But the difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourslef, 'But how can it be like that?' -- which is a reflection of an uncontrolled and utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar....Do not keep saying to yourself, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped."
As In The Age of Entanglement makes clear, many brilliant physicists, including the leading lights of quantum mechanics, could not resist exploring those blind alleys. The book explores their frustrations in trying to make sense of that which makes no sense and so violently conflicts with the world of classical physics in which we all live. This tension is made ironically and delightfully clear in Gilder's recountings of the conversations between the physicists, in which the most arcane and almost mystical ideas are given equal weight with the mundane actions of those who express them, who eat, walk and fiddle with their pipes even as they discuss the deepest mysteries of the universe. In The Age of Entanglement won't make you understand quantum physics any better, but it will make you understand better the physists who struggled so hard to understand (and sometimes to evade) the meaning of their own ideas.
In In The Age of Entanglement, Gilder illuminates entanglement through imagined or reconstructed conversations between the physicists who created the edifice of quantum mechanics. Using the diaries, notebooks, books and recollections of those physicists and their friends, collegues and families, Gilder draws a compelling picture of the history of an idea and the frustration and angst it caused in those who developed it.
The weirdness of quantum mechanics and its impact on the psyches of those who tried to understand it, which is a central idea of this book, is well summed up by what Richard Feynman had to say in an oft-quoted remark: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Feynman explained that in quantum mechanics, "our imagination is stretched to the utmost -- not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." Warning that these things are difficult to understand (surely an understantement) Feynman said:
"But the difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourslef, 'But how can it be like that?' -- which is a reflection of an uncontrolled and utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar....Do not keep saying to yourself, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped."
As In The Age of Entanglement makes clear, many brilliant physicists, including the leading lights of quantum mechanics, could not resist exploring those blind alleys. The book explores their frustrations in trying to make sense of that which makes no sense and so violently conflicts with the world of classical physics in which we all live. This tension is made ironically and delightfully clear in Gilder's recountings of the conversations between the physicists, in which the most arcane and almost mystical ideas are given equal weight with the mundane actions of those who express them, who eat, walk and fiddle with their pipes even as they discuss the deepest mysteries of the universe. In The Age of Entanglement won't make you understand quantum physics any better, but it will make you understand better the physists who struggled so hard to understand (and sometimes to evade) the meaning of their own ideas.
April 20, 2019
Very, very good. Gilder does an excellent job of capturing the personality, fervor, and excitement of a bunch of men who reinvented the universe. This book gives a cogent and smart account of how we got some very complex ideas. Read it.
June 3, 2009
(This is a cross-post of my review at http://thebartbooks.blogspot.com/2009...)
“This quantum question is so uncommonly important and difficult that it should concern everyone.”
-- Albert Einstein, 1908.
The concepts of quantum mechanics have fascinated me for a great many years. I’ve read dozens of books on the subject but am no closer to grasping the concepts underlying a mystery that perplexed Einstein himself until the day he died.
Einstein spent his entire life wrestling with the issues raised by the initial discovery of quantum mechanics in the year 1900. He was never really able to move past his initial frustration with the fact that under certain physical circumstances, two individual subatomic particles, far apart from each other, act in concert with each other in a way that violates all known explanations.
These two particles seem to influence each other simultaneously and remotely; communicating with each other by an unknown mechanism that would far exceed the speed of light.
Einstein ridiculed this phenomenon as “spooky action-at-a-distance” and called it “a sort of telepathic coupling” in his initial efforts to argue that someone must have had a few too many drinks down at the lab.
The phenomenon has since been proven to exist and this book is the true story of the people who spent (and are spending) their lives studying quantum mechanics, spooky action-at-a-distance, and are trying to make sense of it all. I really hope they figure it out in our lifetime because it is 100% guaranteed to be a jaw dropping revision to our sense of reality. [For a (relatively) quick overview of quantum entanglement, this entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does as good a job of any on the web: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-...]
What may be in store for us is a shock as big as the one that came to the citizens of Flatland in one of my absolute favorite books: The very brief (less than 50 pages) story of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott.
In Flatland, Abbott describes a world of people who live in a two dimensional world – a flat plane -- where men are polygons and women are line segments. They have no concept of up or down. And then, one day, a three dimensional sphere visits them and it rocks their world as it demonstrates how what they see in two dimensions is proof of a third dimension.
Such a world-rocking is likely somewhere in our future, and some very smart folks (string theorists) think that many additional dimensions exist and that all matter (and especially those spooky particles) is connected through one of those other dimensions.
At first, The Age of Entanglement was not at all what I wanted, because I was hoping for an account of the latest breakthroughs in the field and a description of new quantum theories. Instead I found myself reading a historical account of the characters, featuring a fictionalized recreation of their conversations. (The author drew on actual letters and speeches by the scientists in her effort to recreate various conversations.)
After the initial frustration at this artifice I found myself captivated by the story of how Einstein, Schrödinger, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Bohm, Feynman, and of course Bell devoted much of their lives to thinking about and discussing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.
Put another way, I did not want to learn about the historical context of their respective efforts and how they overlapped and interacted with each other. But I’m glad I did.
I recommend this book only to people who have a strong interest not only in quantum mechanics but in the stories of the scientists whose lives were and are tangled up in its concepts. Those folks will likely enjoy it a great deal.
“This quantum question is so uncommonly important and difficult that it should concern everyone.”
-- Albert Einstein, 1908.
The concepts of quantum mechanics have fascinated me for a great many years. I’ve read dozens of books on the subject but am no closer to grasping the concepts underlying a mystery that perplexed Einstein himself until the day he died.
Einstein spent his entire life wrestling with the issues raised by the initial discovery of quantum mechanics in the year 1900. He was never really able to move past his initial frustration with the fact that under certain physical circumstances, two individual subatomic particles, far apart from each other, act in concert with each other in a way that violates all known explanations.
These two particles seem to influence each other simultaneously and remotely; communicating with each other by an unknown mechanism that would far exceed the speed of light.
Einstein ridiculed this phenomenon as “spooky action-at-a-distance” and called it “a sort of telepathic coupling” in his initial efforts to argue that someone must have had a few too many drinks down at the lab.
The phenomenon has since been proven to exist and this book is the true story of the people who spent (and are spending) their lives studying quantum mechanics, spooky action-at-a-distance, and are trying to make sense of it all. I really hope they figure it out in our lifetime because it is 100% guaranteed to be a jaw dropping revision to our sense of reality. [For a (relatively) quick overview of quantum entanglement, this entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does as good a job of any on the web: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-...]
What may be in store for us is a shock as big as the one that came to the citizens of Flatland in one of my absolute favorite books: The very brief (less than 50 pages) story of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott.
In Flatland, Abbott describes a world of people who live in a two dimensional world – a flat plane -- where men are polygons and women are line segments. They have no concept of up or down. And then, one day, a three dimensional sphere visits them and it rocks their world as it demonstrates how what they see in two dimensions is proof of a third dimension.
Such a world-rocking is likely somewhere in our future, and some very smart folks (string theorists) think that many additional dimensions exist and that all matter (and especially those spooky particles) is connected through one of those other dimensions.
At first, The Age of Entanglement was not at all what I wanted, because I was hoping for an account of the latest breakthroughs in the field and a description of new quantum theories. Instead I found myself reading a historical account of the characters, featuring a fictionalized recreation of their conversations. (The author drew on actual letters and speeches by the scientists in her effort to recreate various conversations.)
After the initial frustration at this artifice I found myself captivated by the story of how Einstein, Schrödinger, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Bohm, Feynman, and of course Bell devoted much of their lives to thinking about and discussing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.
Put another way, I did not want to learn about the historical context of their respective efforts and how they overlapped and interacted with each other. But I’m glad I did.
I recommend this book only to people who have a strong interest not only in quantum mechanics but in the stories of the scientists whose lives were and are tangled up in its concepts. Those folks will likely enjoy it a great deal.
July 2, 2016
Why did it take so long to discover entanglement after quantum mechanics was developed? This question is examined in light of the personalities of the scientists and the conversations between them. As for the physics itself, consider this comment about the Schrödinger equation:
The delay in discovering entanglement is attributed to Niels Bohr and his philosophy that it is not possible to understand what is happening in quantum mechanics and it is even wrong to try. Worse was the notion of the observer actually being essential to any observation, as opposed to the observation requiring interaction of the particle with photons, affecting the result. John Bell is quoted as asking, "Was the wave function of the world waiting to jump for billions of years until a single celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for a better system with a PhD?" Niels Bohr's powerful personality ensured that most physicists accepted his view, and that which he said cannot be questioned was not questioned. Again, Bell says of those who did question, "Their arguments were not refuted, they were simply trampled on." Blinded by this philosophy, Bohr's followers ignored the evidence for entanglement. It was the skeptic Albert Einstein who identified it in his famous 1935 "EPR" paper. He tried to defend realism by showing that QM was flawed by predicting spooky action at a great distance, faster than light can travel. But even Einstein was dismissed and ignored for many decades. A more forceful defense of realism in QM can be found in The Beginning of Infinity by physicist David Deutch.
Perhaps the central character in the book is John Bell, also a fierce defender of realism. In his spare time, because no one else cared, he explored the EPR result and developed his Bell's Inequality. This mathematically proved that the results of quantum mechanics are not compatible with "locality". Thus two particles far apart can be instantaneously connected, just as the Schrödinger equation suggests. We can keep realism only if we accept action at a distance.
The book ends the same way as Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin, though I think Gribbin did a better job of it. In general, the book does better for giving a feel for how the process of science works than explain the science itself. It is insightful how undue deference to authority and a circular philosophy that inhibits questioning and understanding can delay the advance of science for decades. I am glad I read this book.
"The wave function ψ described an electron in in three dimensions: perfect. But it described a pair of electrons as a single wave in six dimensions: nonsense."Nonsense was the prevailing point of view at the time, which was "fixed" by Max Born interpreting the equation as the probability of finding the particle somewhere. Entanglement, the theme of the book, is defined right in the equation - two particles are part of the same wave. But what about the six dimensions? Perhaps we have two 3-dimensional universes? Strangely this "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics is barely mentioned in the book.
The delay in discovering entanglement is attributed to Niels Bohr and his philosophy that it is not possible to understand what is happening in quantum mechanics and it is even wrong to try. Worse was the notion of the observer actually being essential to any observation, as opposed to the observation requiring interaction of the particle with photons, affecting the result. John Bell is quoted as asking, "Was the wave function of the world waiting to jump for billions of years until a single celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for a better system with a PhD?" Niels Bohr's powerful personality ensured that most physicists accepted his view, and that which he said cannot be questioned was not questioned. Again, Bell says of those who did question, "Their arguments were not refuted, they were simply trampled on." Blinded by this philosophy, Bohr's followers ignored the evidence for entanglement. It was the skeptic Albert Einstein who identified it in his famous 1935 "EPR" paper. He tried to defend realism by showing that QM was flawed by predicting spooky action at a great distance, faster than light can travel. But even Einstein was dismissed and ignored for many decades. A more forceful defense of realism in QM can be found in The Beginning of Infinity by physicist David Deutch.
Perhaps the central character in the book is John Bell, also a fierce defender of realism. In his spare time, because no one else cared, he explored the EPR result and developed his Bell's Inequality. This mathematically proved that the results of quantum mechanics are not compatible with "locality". Thus two particles far apart can be instantaneously connected, just as the Schrödinger equation suggests. We can keep realism only if we accept action at a distance.
The book ends the same way as Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin, though I think Gribbin did a better job of it. In general, the book does better for giving a feel for how the process of science works than explain the science itself. It is insightful how undue deference to authority and a circular philosophy that inhibits questioning and understanding can delay the advance of science for decades. I am glad I read this book.
August 29, 2011
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
- Albert Einstein
Even after reading this book, I don't understand quantum physics - but that wasn't the author's purpose. She focused on the history of the research and the relationships between the scientists. This book isn't for everyone. You don't have to know a lot of math or physics, but I can't imagine you would enjoy this book without a significant math and physics background. In case you aren't going to read it, here are some things you might be interested in:
1. A lot of the book was based on letters written by the scientists to each other. No one writes letters anymore - does that mean we won't have a record of what people are thinking anymore? Or will emails serve the same purpose?
2. Sometimes we have an unrealistic view of how new scientific knowledge is obtained. You know, someone comes up with a theory and the other scientists work together to do experiments to prove or disprove the theory. In reality there are arguments between scientists, jealousy, politics, premature consensus - everything imperfect humans struggle with.
- Albert Einstein
Even after reading this book, I don't understand quantum physics - but that wasn't the author's purpose. She focused on the history of the research and the relationships between the scientists. This book isn't for everyone. You don't have to know a lot of math or physics, but I can't imagine you would enjoy this book without a significant math and physics background. In case you aren't going to read it, here are some things you might be interested in:
1. A lot of the book was based on letters written by the scientists to each other. No one writes letters anymore - does that mean we won't have a record of what people are thinking anymore? Or will emails serve the same purpose?
2. Sometimes we have an unrealistic view of how new scientific knowledge is obtained. You know, someone comes up with a theory and the other scientists work together to do experiments to prove or disprove the theory. In reality there are arguments between scientists, jealousy, politics, premature consensus - everything imperfect humans struggle with.
May 25, 2016
Great history of quantum mechanics till about the last decade. As usual for books of the type it mentions subjects very close to my interest area and adds significantly to my reading list
August 11, 2011
In 1989, the year before he died, John Bell gave the "speech of his career" to his fellow physicists, taking issue with the standard interpretation of quantum physics: "It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned about 'results of measurement' and has nothing to say about anything else. What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of 'measurer'? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system...with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but highly idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less 'measurement-like' processes are going on more or less all the time, more or less everywhere?"
In The Age of Entanglement, Louisa Gilder presents us with quantum physics not as a textbook abstraction, but as a vigorous debate among brilliant men and women trying to make sense of the most baffling of mysteries. Gilder has performed a great service by assembling a vast collection of letters, conversations, speeches and anecdotes to tell this story in a fascinating way. Over many years of contentious theorizing and difficult experimentation, physicists came to grips with the implications of quantum mechanics: either little things are not fully real until they are observed by big things like us (the view attacked by Bell); or maybe they are real in some mysterious way, entangled in a hidden web of nonlocal connections. Quantum physics challenges the traditional scientific view of a world consisting of separate, independently existing objects exerting forces on one another from point to point to point in space.
I suggest that readers without a lot of familiarity with quantum physics have handy a book which explains the physics a little more clearly, such as Rosenblum and Kuttner's Quantum Enigma. The strength of Gilder's book is less in its explanations than its storytelling. For that, it is a great read.
In The Age of Entanglement, Louisa Gilder presents us with quantum physics not as a textbook abstraction, but as a vigorous debate among brilliant men and women trying to make sense of the most baffling of mysteries. Gilder has performed a great service by assembling a vast collection of letters, conversations, speeches and anecdotes to tell this story in a fascinating way. Over many years of contentious theorizing and difficult experimentation, physicists came to grips with the implications of quantum mechanics: either little things are not fully real until they are observed by big things like us (the view attacked by Bell); or maybe they are real in some mysterious way, entangled in a hidden web of nonlocal connections. Quantum physics challenges the traditional scientific view of a world consisting of separate, independently existing objects exerting forces on one another from point to point to point in space.
I suggest that readers without a lot of familiarity with quantum physics have handy a book which explains the physics a little more clearly, such as Rosenblum and Kuttner's Quantum Enigma. The strength of Gilder's book is less in its explanations than its storytelling. For that, it is a great read.
May 13, 2021
An unusual book, almost historical fiction but, in a twist, the historical characters’ words have been researched thoroughly and are the words they spoke in their times. This brings the ideas of the physicists who are the characters to life. Quantum Entanglement and it's development are the real subjects, here. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 18, 2024
A “BOOK OF CONVERSATIONS” BETWEEN PHYSICISTS ABOUT QUANTUM THEORY
In her ‘Note to the Reader,’ author Louisa Gilder explains, “This is a book of conversations, a book about how the give-and-take between physicists repeated change the direction in which quantum physics developed… All the conversations in this book occurred in some form, on the date specified in the text, and I have fully documented the substance of each one… Most are composed of direct quotes (or close paraphrases) from the trove of letters, papers, and memoirs that these physicists left behind. When occasional connective tissue (e.g., ‘Nice to see you,’ or ‘I agree’) was necessary, I tried to keep it both innocuous and also sensitive to the character, beliefs, and history of the people involved. (Pg. xiv)
She observes in the Introduction, “The mysteries embedded in quantum mechanics provoked four major reactions from its founder: orthodoxy, heresy, agnosticism, and simple misunderstanding. Three of the theory’s founders ([Niels] Bohr, [Werner] Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli) gave it its orthodox exegesis, which came to be known as the Copenhagen interpretation. Three more founders (including Einstein) were heretics, believing that something was rotten in the quantum theory they had played such a role in developing, Finally, pragmatic people said, 'The time is not yet ripe for understanding these things, and confused people dismissed the mysteries with simplistic explanations.'” (Pg. 4)
She records, “in 1909, only nine years after quantum theory’s tentative debut, Albert Einstein began to worry that it implied a world composed of non-separable pieces that were ‘not… mutually independent.’… they seemed to exert ‘a mutual influence… of a quite mysterious nature’ on each other, or even seemed to affect each other in what he ridiculed as ‘spooky action-at-a-distance,’ or ‘a sort of telepathic coupling.’ To him it was clear that this meant a fatal flaw in the theory.” (Pg. 6)
She notes, “Bell’s theorem showed that the world of quantum mechanics… is composed of entities that are either… not locally causal, not fully separable, and even not real unless observed. If the entities of the quantum world are not locally causal, then an action measuring a particle can have instantaneous ‘spooky’ effects across the universe… The most extreme version of nonseparability is the idea that the quantum entities do no become solid until they are observed, like the proverbial tree that makes no sound when it falls unless a listener is around. Einstein found the implications ludicrous: ‘Do you really believe the moon is not there is nobody looks?’” (Pg. 9-10)
She recounts, “Einstein and Bohr would draw different morals from this difficultly of forming a picture of atomic behavior. Bohr would soon say it couldn’t be done. The behavior of atoms, and their insides, were irreducibly unvisualizable. Einstein would say there was something wrong with a physics that would come to this conclusion.” (Pg. 45)
She reports a conversation: “‘I admit that I am strongly attracted,’ said Heisenberg slowly, ‘by the simplicity, and beauty, of the mathematical schemes with which nature suddenly spreads out before us---the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships, for which none of us was in the least prepared. I know you have felt this, too.’ Einstein sat smoking and nodding. Then he said, ‘Still, I should never claim that I really understood what is meant by the simplicity of natural laws.’” (Pg. 88)
She says, “One day, after Einstein had asked for the umpteenth time if Bohr really believed God played dice to determine the future, a smile dawned on Bohr’s face. ‘Einstein,’ he said, ‘stop telling God how to run the world.’” (Pg. 113)
She says of the famous EPR paper, “the paper famously (and significantly) defined an ‘element of reality’: ‘If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this physical quantity… While we have shown that the wave function does not provide a complete description of the physical reality, we have left open the question of whether or not such a description exists. We believe, however, that such a theory is possible.” (Pg. 160)
She records, “‘One can even construct quite burlesque cases,’ wrote Schrödinger. He described ‘a cat shut up in a steel chamber with a diabolical apparatus…’ This apparatus involves a vial of poison which will be smashed by a hammer… [after] the decay of a single radioactive atom. If the atom decays, the cat breathes the poison; if not, the cat remains safe… There is so little radioactive substance ‘that in the course of ah hour PERHAPS one atom of it disintegrates, but also with equal probability not even one… If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, then one will say to himself that the cat is still living, if in that time no atom has disintegrated. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The [wave-]function of the entire system would express this situation by having the living and the dead cat mixed or smeared out.’ With this…. A cat in a superposition of simultaneous death and live---Schrödinger demonstrated the desperate state of a theory that required measurement to make it work.” (Pg. 173)
She summarizes, “Every step---from the entanglement abstractly inherent in Schrödinger’s wave equation to EPR, when Einstein imagined just what this implied, to Bell’s closer scrutiny, finding it a testable conflict, to … bringing that conflict into the lab---was a step closer to incarnation. But this story had to far rested in the hands of the theorists. Nineteen sixty-nine was the year in which the experimentalists took command of the age of entanglement.” (Pg. 260)
She imagines a conversation: “‘Does the chair exist when you’re not there to look at it?’… This is what I found infuriating… It’s the whole Bishop Berkeley question of ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?’ Quantum mechanics answers the bishop, ‘No.’ If you close the box, is the chair still there? How about a shoe? You’d be pretty surprised if your shoes changed color in the box coming home from the shoe store. How about ions?... So if you put an ion in your box, is it in the box when you close the lid? What if you have two photons in an entangled state … and you put one in the box you’re holding and one in the box I’m holding? Are they there?... Is IT in the box when you close the lid?” (Pg. 279)
She concludes, “What is more likely is that that new way of seeing things will involve an imaginative leap that will astonish us. In any case, it seems that the quantum mechanical description will be superceded. In this it is like all theories made by man. But to an unusual extent its ultimate fate is apparent in its internal structure. It carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction.” (Pg. 330)
Gilder’s reconstruction of these “conversations” makes for smoother reading (and she is an excellent writer); but some readers may find this makes the book more like a “novelization” than a genuine historical work.
In her ‘Note to the Reader,’ author Louisa Gilder explains, “This is a book of conversations, a book about how the give-and-take between physicists repeated change the direction in which quantum physics developed… All the conversations in this book occurred in some form, on the date specified in the text, and I have fully documented the substance of each one… Most are composed of direct quotes (or close paraphrases) from the trove of letters, papers, and memoirs that these physicists left behind. When occasional connective tissue (e.g., ‘Nice to see you,’ or ‘I agree’) was necessary, I tried to keep it both innocuous and also sensitive to the character, beliefs, and history of the people involved. (Pg. xiv)
She observes in the Introduction, “The mysteries embedded in quantum mechanics provoked four major reactions from its founder: orthodoxy, heresy, agnosticism, and simple misunderstanding. Three of the theory’s founders ([Niels] Bohr, [Werner] Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli) gave it its orthodox exegesis, which came to be known as the Copenhagen interpretation. Three more founders (including Einstein) were heretics, believing that something was rotten in the quantum theory they had played such a role in developing, Finally, pragmatic people said, 'The time is not yet ripe for understanding these things, and confused people dismissed the mysteries with simplistic explanations.'” (Pg. 4)
She records, “in 1909, only nine years after quantum theory’s tentative debut, Albert Einstein began to worry that it implied a world composed of non-separable pieces that were ‘not… mutually independent.’… they seemed to exert ‘a mutual influence… of a quite mysterious nature’ on each other, or even seemed to affect each other in what he ridiculed as ‘spooky action-at-a-distance,’ or ‘a sort of telepathic coupling.’ To him it was clear that this meant a fatal flaw in the theory.” (Pg. 6)
She notes, “Bell’s theorem showed that the world of quantum mechanics… is composed of entities that are either… not locally causal, not fully separable, and even not real unless observed. If the entities of the quantum world are not locally causal, then an action measuring a particle can have instantaneous ‘spooky’ effects across the universe… The most extreme version of nonseparability is the idea that the quantum entities do no become solid until they are observed, like the proverbial tree that makes no sound when it falls unless a listener is around. Einstein found the implications ludicrous: ‘Do you really believe the moon is not there is nobody looks?’” (Pg. 9-10)
She recounts, “Einstein and Bohr would draw different morals from this difficultly of forming a picture of atomic behavior. Bohr would soon say it couldn’t be done. The behavior of atoms, and their insides, were irreducibly unvisualizable. Einstein would say there was something wrong with a physics that would come to this conclusion.” (Pg. 45)
She reports a conversation: “‘I admit that I am strongly attracted,’ said Heisenberg slowly, ‘by the simplicity, and beauty, of the mathematical schemes with which nature suddenly spreads out before us---the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships, for which none of us was in the least prepared. I know you have felt this, too.’ Einstein sat smoking and nodding. Then he said, ‘Still, I should never claim that I really understood what is meant by the simplicity of natural laws.’” (Pg. 88)
She says, “One day, after Einstein had asked for the umpteenth time if Bohr really believed God played dice to determine the future, a smile dawned on Bohr’s face. ‘Einstein,’ he said, ‘stop telling God how to run the world.’” (Pg. 113)
She says of the famous EPR paper, “the paper famously (and significantly) defined an ‘element of reality’: ‘If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this physical quantity… While we have shown that the wave function does not provide a complete description of the physical reality, we have left open the question of whether or not such a description exists. We believe, however, that such a theory is possible.” (Pg. 160)
She records, “‘One can even construct quite burlesque cases,’ wrote Schrödinger. He described ‘a cat shut up in a steel chamber with a diabolical apparatus…’ This apparatus involves a vial of poison which will be smashed by a hammer… [after] the decay of a single radioactive atom. If the atom decays, the cat breathes the poison; if not, the cat remains safe… There is so little radioactive substance ‘that in the course of ah hour PERHAPS one atom of it disintegrates, but also with equal probability not even one… If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, then one will say to himself that the cat is still living, if in that time no atom has disintegrated. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The [wave-]function of the entire system would express this situation by having the living and the dead cat mixed or smeared out.’ With this…. A cat in a superposition of simultaneous death and live---Schrödinger demonstrated the desperate state of a theory that required measurement to make it work.” (Pg. 173)
She summarizes, “Every step---from the entanglement abstractly inherent in Schrödinger’s wave equation to EPR, when Einstein imagined just what this implied, to Bell’s closer scrutiny, finding it a testable conflict, to … bringing that conflict into the lab---was a step closer to incarnation. But this story had to far rested in the hands of the theorists. Nineteen sixty-nine was the year in which the experimentalists took command of the age of entanglement.” (Pg. 260)
She imagines a conversation: “‘Does the chair exist when you’re not there to look at it?’… This is what I found infuriating… It’s the whole Bishop Berkeley question of ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?’ Quantum mechanics answers the bishop, ‘No.’ If you close the box, is the chair still there? How about a shoe? You’d be pretty surprised if your shoes changed color in the box coming home from the shoe store. How about ions?... So if you put an ion in your box, is it in the box when you close the lid? What if you have two photons in an entangled state … and you put one in the box you’re holding and one in the box I’m holding? Are they there?... Is IT in the box when you close the lid?” (Pg. 279)
She concludes, “What is more likely is that that new way of seeing things will involve an imaginative leap that will astonish us. In any case, it seems that the quantum mechanical description will be superceded. In this it is like all theories made by man. But to an unusual extent its ultimate fate is apparent in its internal structure. It carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction.” (Pg. 330)
Gilder’s reconstruction of these “conversations” makes for smoother reading (and she is an excellent writer); but some readers may find this makes the book more like a “novelization” than a genuine historical work.
January 30, 2023
I'm only giving it three stars because, while it was a decently interesting read and does a splendid job of presenting the history of quantum physics, and the interactions and conversations between physicists that led to new theories, it does a truly terrible job of actually explaining the ideas themselves. I would have been royally lost if I hadn't read Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity just a few weeks ago, which does a much better job of explaining the ideas referred to in this one.
So, don't come into this book expecting to learn about quantum physics, and don't expect to enjoy this book if you don't already have that foundation - read the book only if you already have a thorough layperson's understanding of quantum physics (and even then, expect it to befuddle and confuse the ideas you've already grasped).
So, don't come into this book expecting to learn about quantum physics, and don't expect to enjoy this book if you don't already have that foundation - read the book only if you already have a thorough layperson's understanding of quantum physics (and even then, expect it to befuddle and confuse the ideas you've already grasped).
June 6, 2024
‘The Rigors of Angels’ got me to read up on quantum physics and I hoped this intellectual history would serve me as well that book. Sadly that didn’t happen. This book is an engaging group biography of many interrelated physicists but sadly weak on the intellectual part of the history.
The difference between these books is that ‘Angels’ used physics as one approach to thinking that leaves common sense behind as the goal of understanding. Here the ferment thrown up by all there mini- bios is a way into concepts that can’t be adequately explored without the language of mathematics.
The prose was engaging, the way she organized the back and forth between the physicists coherent but ultimately I didn’t feel any further along in my understanding of the core concepts of 20th-21st century physics.
The difference between these books is that ‘Angels’ used physics as one approach to thinking that leaves common sense behind as the goal of understanding. Here the ferment thrown up by all there mini- bios is a way into concepts that can’t be adequately explored without the language of mathematics.
The prose was engaging, the way she organized the back and forth between the physicists coherent but ultimately I didn’t feel any further along in my understanding of the core concepts of 20th-21st century physics.
April 15, 2021
Very different: it consist of imagined conversations between the leading physicists of the 20th century discussing quantum mechanics. Despite the subject matter it works well as an audiobook.
January 19, 2014
I felt a little frustrated with this book. First, let me say that it is such a great idea. Exploring the history of the theory of quantum mechanics via the difficulties surrounding entanglement is brilliant. I also think this book does a good job discussing some of the serious personal and political dramas these researchers faced (e.g. the rise of the Nazis and the second red scare in the US).
That being said, I didn't like that the science was often skipped. When it wasn't, I thought it was confusing (with the one exception of quantum information at the end). Maybe that's unavoidable with this topic? Perhaps this book is best meant for physicists interested in the history of the subject. I think a general audience would find this book boring and, therefore, difficult to finish.
All in all, I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of physics.
That being said, I didn't like that the science was often skipped. When it wasn't, I thought it was confusing (with the one exception of quantum information at the end). Maybe that's unavoidable with this topic? Perhaps this book is best meant for physicists interested in the history of the subject. I think a general audience would find this book boring and, therefore, difficult to finish.
All in all, I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of physics.
January 24, 2019
What were you doing seven years out of college? Writing a page-turner, science history book like this one? No slacker she, Louisa Gilder was polishing off this page-turning narrative of ninety-six years of the development of the Quantum Theory. You'll need to read parts of this book three times to understand the mysterious science displayed here . . . but keep at it: the intellectual rewards provided by this book are real and lasting. I'm eager to read her next work and appreciate the hours of mental enlargement she gave me through reading this stunning history.
February 5, 2019
I loved this book when I read it several years ago, and enjoyed it even more on a recent reread. The author does a masterful job of weaving human characters, personalities, and historic background together with the revolutionary ideas the protagonists were pursuing. The physical and quantum mechanical concepts are very well explained. This is one of my favorite books and I look forward to more from this author.
March 19, 2017
I have a layman's fascination with quantum mechanics. I loved this book because it introduced me to the concepts in quantum mechanics in an understandable way and it is a charming story of the interaction between the great physicists of the 20th century.
January 20, 2022
This was an incredibly unique peek into the world of cutting-edge physics and I deeply enjoyed the way that it brought the developmental aspect of theoretical physics to life. Most science seems to have popped into existence as a fully-formed slice of knowledge, even the most revolutionary concepts seem to be formed in discrete packets of pre-fab theory. Like how the Heliocentric debate was more a theological issue than a mathematical issue. Or Evolution was controversial for its religious and philosophical implications more than it was a question of genetic. And any fifth grader could tell you that plate tectonics makes sense of the continental puzzle-pieces.
Theoretical physics is different. There's an element of fair plausibility to multiple theories concocted to explain aspects of classical physics that simply "aren't working" when compared to observed phenomena. Where Heliocentrism simply SOLVED multiple problems of old theory "not working" with observation (retrograde of mars and such), in contrast to the complications of math needed to excuse aspects of geocentrism, much of modern physics derives from more nebulous "well it's not NOT working" questions where we can make the mathematical descriptions fit the phenomena, but it isn't pretty and we know it probably should be.
There's totally a chance that we'll develop a magically radical new perspective that has an element of 'just solves the issues' as our whole conception on the state of the universe shifts, but it's less likely to happen due to a simple re-framing.
This book walks readers (or listeners, as I did the audiobook and deeply enjoyed it) through the conversations that sparked questions and the quandaries being wrestled with by all sorts of curious minds. It brings a vibrant sort of Life to what many consider a rather dry (even desiccated) subject.
While the early conversations are a bit stilted and awkward, as most of the lines are pulled from letters and the tags and blocking of the scene are worked out by a ... less than Shakespearean hand (sorry.. I get that Gilder is trying to be Spartan out of respect to try to keep the words as authentic as possible, but it's not well-crafted narrative by any stretch), it still offers tremendous insight to the relationships and developmental stepping stones of some of Physics' most important theories. The later conversations, pulled often from actual recordings and worked in with more modern colloquial verbiage seems to have been easier to work with because the narrative is markedly better and far more fluid. Theoretical physics is an incredibly dynamic field and I deeply enjoy how well this work represents that.
It is NOT a beginner's book of Physics. It's definitely more for those in the high-end of intermediate to early-advanced level category of Physicists. That said, I do think it's an incredibly valuable piece of reading for anyone thinking of going into the Physics field, and for anyone engaged in any of the varied Historical fields. History needs to be intersectional, more than any other field really, because history IS every other field (while math is the root of all sciences, history is the summation of them).
I HIGHLY recommend it, though only to an admittedly more narrow audience than I generally aim such praises at encouraging.
April 22, 2019
I read this book a few years ago. But I liked it so much that I have gone back to it from time to time to reread some of the more interesting sections and chapters. As someone who wanted to be a physicist or astronomer when I was in high school, but eventually went in other directions, I have had a lifelong fascination with both. Some reviewers have complained that this book did not explain the science thoroughly enough. However, that was not the main purpose of the book, and since most physicists who even work in this field would agree with Richard Feynman on the difficulty of truly understanding quantum physics, I think Louisa Gilder was very wise to approach the subject the way she did. She did a masterful job in bringing to life many of the central players in the story. She also put the long running debates and collaborations among the scientists who were in the thick of things in historical context as quantum physics began and was developed. It is true that the second half of the book is a more sustained and continuous story of the exploration of entanglement itself, as compared to the first half of the book, during which this major question kept popping up but was mostly ignored. The first half moves around more in time, and covers the contributions of a fairly large number of physicists to the discoveries of quantum physics. But I do not agree with some of the reviewers here who think the first half of the book is too disjointed or confusing. The nature of the beast itself (quantum physics) is what is quite confusing. I would say that Ms Gilder's partly fictionalized account of the early discoveries, questions, conversations, speculations, and debates reads like a novel and could be quite helpful to anyone who wants to learn more about this history and have a better understanding of who the players were and the arguments, collaborations, and other interactions that went on between these giants of 20th Century physics. It is very creative and engaging story telling.
November 22, 2024
“Age of Entanglement” by Louisa Gilder
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
PRINT:
© 2008, November 11; 978-1400044177; Knopf; 1st edition; 464 pages; unabridged (Info from Amazon)
DIGITAL:
© 2008, November 11; Vintage, 1st edition; 716 pages; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
(*this one)-AUDIO:
© 2009, July 30; Gildan Media, LLC; 14:08:00 duration; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
FILM:
No.
CHARACTERS: (Not Comprehensive)
N/A
SERIES: No
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED:
This was next to read on the chronological oldest to newest Audible acquisitions list. It’s another that Don added to our library.
ABOUT: Albert Einstein showed that separate particles can act as if intimately connected. Erwin Schrodinger called this “entanglement”.
OVERALL OPINION:
I enjoyed hearing about all of the physicists assertions and interactions. I personally think this concept extends beyond particles into the realm of thought and human connections.
AUTHOR:
Louisa Gilder: (From Bookloft)
“Louisa Gilder was born in Tyringham, Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000. After living and writing for a while in Bodega Bay, California, she returned to live in her home town.”
NARRATOR: (From Dixonvoice.com)
Walter Dixon
Walter Dixon is a winner of Audible’s “#1 Editor’s Choice and Customer Favorites” award. He has narrated more than 200 audiobooks, performed in musical theatre, drama and opera productions, voiced commercials, corporate videos, animated features, vintage radio dramas and audio tours for the Guggenheim and other museums.
He has recorded unabridged audiobooks for:
Audible ;Brilliance; Blackstone; Dreamscape Media; Deyan Audio; Gildan Media; John Marshall Media; HarperAudio;; Live Oak Media; Macmillan Audio; Redwood Audiobooks; Spoken Arts; Tantor Media; Zondervan;
His background includes musical theatre, professional stand-up comedy and field producer for public radio.
His hobbies include cycling, close-up magic and playing the Irish penny whistle. Some say his best trick would be to make the whistle disappear.
He works out of his home studio near Boston, Massachusetts.
Audible Approved narrator/producer
Winner of Audible's “#1 Editor's Choice and Customer Favorites” award for “Attached"
Curriculum Vitae
More than 200 audiobooks recorded.
Selected Titles
NONFICTION
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The Willpower Instinct; The ADHD Advantage; The Beginning of Infinity; The Story of Earth; Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
SELF DEVELOPMENT
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone; Trading in the Zone
Good Thinking; Instant Influence; Weekend Millionaire Mindset
BUSINESS
The Three Laws of Performance; Other People’s Money; The Ultimate Question; The Small Business Bible; The Little Book of Currency Trading
HISTORY
American Nations; Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years; Common Sense; The Secret Lives of Code Breakers; The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Born
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
God and the Afterlife; Rashi; Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel; Forged: Writing in the Name of God; Memories of Muhammad
BIOS AND MEMOIRS
The Psychopath Inside; The Man Who Sold America; A Life in the Balance; The Einstein of Money; You Only Have to Be Right Once
FICTION
Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie; Call of the Wild; Articles of War; Kiss of Darkness; Bloodsucking Fiends
KIDS
A Bear Called Trouble; Elephants of Africa; Tales From the Silk Road; The Golden Rule; Freddy to the Rescue; Henry David’s House
GENRE:
Nonfiction; biography; history; Physics;
SUBJECTS (Not comprehensive):
Quantum Physics; Entanglement; Albert Einstein; Erwin Schrodinger; John Bell; Max von Laue; David Bohm; Richard Feynman; J. Robert Openheimer; Werner Heisenberg; Wolfgang Pauli; Louis de Broglie; Carlo Roveli; Neils Bohr; Paul Ehrenfest; Light; Atoms; Waves; Philosophy
TIME PERIOD
19th, 20th, & 21st centuries
LOCATIONS
U.S. and Europe primarily
DEDICATION:
“For my father”
EXCERPT
From “Introduction”:
“Entanglement
Any time two entities interact, they entangle. It doesn’t matter if they are photons (bits of light), atoms (bits of matter), or bigger things made of atoms like dust motes, microscopes, cats, or people. The entanglement persists no matter how far these entities separate, as long as they don’t subsequently interact with anything else-an almost impossibly tall order for a cat or a person, which is why we don’t notice the effect.
But the motions of subatomic particles are dominated by entanglement. It starts when they interact; in doing so, they lose their separate existence. No matter how far they move apart, if one is tweaked, measured, observed, the other seems to instantly respond, even if the whole world now lies between them. And no one knows how.
Strange as it seems, this kind of correlation is happening all the time—and we know it happens because of the work of John Bell. Raised in the chaos of Ireland during the Second World War, he spent his working years in peaceful Switzerland and died just after his sixty-second birthday, the year (unbeknownst to him) that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. He called the work for which he is now most famous his hobby: probing into the logical foundations of quantum mechanics. His second paper on this subject, in 1964, briefly, beautifully, and conclusively demonstrates the existence of entanglement, this magical correlation of two particles. Bell had extended and deepened a hitherto sneered-at paper of Einstein’s on the subject, written in 1935 with two little-known colleagues (Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen). Forty years after its rehabilitation by John Bell, the paper is, by a massive margin, the most cited of all Einstein’s roster of glittering, earthshaking work,*1 and the most cited paper of the dominant physics journal of the second half of the twentieth century, “Physical Review”.
RATING:
5 stars.
STARTED-FINISHED
9/4/2024-9/12/2024
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
PRINT:
© 2008, November 11; 978-1400044177; Knopf; 1st edition; 464 pages; unabridged (Info from Amazon)
DIGITAL:
© 2008, November 11; Vintage, 1st edition; 716 pages; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
(*this one)-AUDIO:
© 2009, July 30; Gildan Media, LLC; 14:08:00 duration; unabridged. (info from Amazon)
FILM:
No.
CHARACTERS: (Not Comprehensive)
N/A
SERIES: No
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED:
This was next to read on the chronological oldest to newest Audible acquisitions list. It’s another that Don added to our library.
ABOUT: Albert Einstein showed that separate particles can act as if intimately connected. Erwin Schrodinger called this “entanglement”.
OVERALL OPINION:
I enjoyed hearing about all of the physicists assertions and interactions. I personally think this concept extends beyond particles into the realm of thought and human connections.
AUTHOR:
Louisa Gilder: (From Bookloft)
“Louisa Gilder was born in Tyringham, Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000. After living and writing for a while in Bodega Bay, California, she returned to live in her home town.”
NARRATOR: (From Dixonvoice.com)
Walter Dixon
Walter Dixon is a winner of Audible’s “#1 Editor’s Choice and Customer Favorites” award. He has narrated more than 200 audiobooks, performed in musical theatre, drama and opera productions, voiced commercials, corporate videos, animated features, vintage radio dramas and audio tours for the Guggenheim and other museums.
He has recorded unabridged audiobooks for:
Audible ;Brilliance; Blackstone; Dreamscape Media; Deyan Audio; Gildan Media; John Marshall Media; HarperAudio;; Live Oak Media; Macmillan Audio; Redwood Audiobooks; Spoken Arts; Tantor Media; Zondervan;
His background includes musical theatre, professional stand-up comedy and field producer for public radio.
His hobbies include cycling, close-up magic and playing the Irish penny whistle. Some say his best trick would be to make the whistle disappear.
He works out of his home studio near Boston, Massachusetts.
Audible Approved narrator/producer
Winner of Audible's “#1 Editor's Choice and Customer Favorites” award for “Attached"
Curriculum Vitae
More than 200 audiobooks recorded.
Selected Titles
NONFICTION
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The Willpower Instinct; The ADHD Advantage; The Beginning of Infinity; The Story of Earth; Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
SELF DEVELOPMENT
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone; Trading in the Zone
Good Thinking; Instant Influence; Weekend Millionaire Mindset
BUSINESS
The Three Laws of Performance; Other People’s Money; The Ultimate Question; The Small Business Bible; The Little Book of Currency Trading
HISTORY
American Nations; Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years; Common Sense; The Secret Lives of Code Breakers; The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Born
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
God and the Afterlife; Rashi; Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel; Forged: Writing in the Name of God; Memories of Muhammad
BIOS AND MEMOIRS
The Psychopath Inside; The Man Who Sold America; A Life in the Balance; The Einstein of Money; You Only Have to Be Right Once
FICTION
Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie; Call of the Wild; Articles of War; Kiss of Darkness; Bloodsucking Fiends
KIDS
A Bear Called Trouble; Elephants of Africa; Tales From the Silk Road; The Golden Rule; Freddy to the Rescue; Henry David’s House
GENRE:
Nonfiction; biography; history; Physics;
SUBJECTS (Not comprehensive):
Quantum Physics; Entanglement; Albert Einstein; Erwin Schrodinger; John Bell; Max von Laue; David Bohm; Richard Feynman; J. Robert Openheimer; Werner Heisenberg; Wolfgang Pauli; Louis de Broglie; Carlo Roveli; Neils Bohr; Paul Ehrenfest; Light; Atoms; Waves; Philosophy
TIME PERIOD
19th, 20th, & 21st centuries
LOCATIONS
U.S. and Europe primarily
DEDICATION:
“For my father”
EXCERPT
From “Introduction”:
“Entanglement
Any time two entities interact, they entangle. It doesn’t matter if they are photons (bits of light), atoms (bits of matter), or bigger things made of atoms like dust motes, microscopes, cats, or people. The entanglement persists no matter how far these entities separate, as long as they don’t subsequently interact with anything else-an almost impossibly tall order for a cat or a person, which is why we don’t notice the effect.
But the motions of subatomic particles are dominated by entanglement. It starts when they interact; in doing so, they lose their separate existence. No matter how far they move apart, if one is tweaked, measured, observed, the other seems to instantly respond, even if the whole world now lies between them. And no one knows how.
Strange as it seems, this kind of correlation is happening all the time—and we know it happens because of the work of John Bell. Raised in the chaos of Ireland during the Second World War, he spent his working years in peaceful Switzerland and died just after his sixty-second birthday, the year (unbeknownst to him) that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. He called the work for which he is now most famous his hobby: probing into the logical foundations of quantum mechanics. His second paper on this subject, in 1964, briefly, beautifully, and conclusively demonstrates the existence of entanglement, this magical correlation of two particles. Bell had extended and deepened a hitherto sneered-at paper of Einstein’s on the subject, written in 1935 with two little-known colleagues (Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen). Forty years after its rehabilitation by John Bell, the paper is, by a massive margin, the most cited of all Einstein’s roster of glittering, earthshaking work,*1 and the most cited paper of the dominant physics journal of the second half of the twentieth century, “Physical Review”.
RATING:
5 stars.
STARTED-FINISHED
9/4/2024-9/12/2024
February 28, 2021
I am so beyond impressed with this author, she captured my attention and wrote such a densely packed book so fluidly. I moved through conversation after conversation with some of history's top scientists, completely swept up in the current. I looked up words in both physics and my own native language that I didn't fully understand, because her absolute mastery of language - from vividly descriptive scenes of skiing to concepts in quantum physics - is truly remarkable.
I am an artist that excels in linguistics and communication, with a strong education and science background, but not by any means a mathematically inclined person. I do not solve equations for fun. Theorizing about matter invisible to the naked eye is not my idea of a good time. I speak and act from the heart and over-intellectualizing tends to bore me, yet she reached me and kept me hooked through more than 300 pages on the science and philosophy behind quantum mechanics. I read this book with morning coffee and nightcaps alike, it felt like watching a movie more than reading a book about science.
I am an artist that excels in linguistics and communication, with a strong education and science background, but not by any means a mathematically inclined person. I do not solve equations for fun. Theorizing about matter invisible to the naked eye is not my idea of a good time. I speak and act from the heart and over-intellectualizing tends to bore me, yet she reached me and kept me hooked through more than 300 pages on the science and philosophy behind quantum mechanics. I read this book with morning coffee and nightcaps alike, it felt like watching a movie more than reading a book about science.
December 20, 2020
The author tries to illustrate the way scientific ideas often develop through lengthy, sometimes heated, discussion, so she recreates (not always convincingly to my mind) the many conversations held by the pioneers of quantum mechanics. I'm not sure anyone could have done a better job (the author certainly knows her subject), but while her approach is sound, the result, unfortunately, is not. A novelist might write (as the author does) "(Einstein) lit a match, two fingers of his right hand holding the thin matchstick over the tobacco..."; but such detail left me wondering, 'did this really happen'; and that thought undermines the authenticity of the recreated conversations. Also, these conversations (like all conversations) sometimes go off in different conflicting directions, with the result that core ideas are often lost in excess verbiage.
August 22, 2025
The Age of Entanglement dives into the fascinating world of quantum physics, chronicling the rebirth of the field through the work of brilliant scientists and the groundbreaking discoveries that reshaped our understanding of reality. The book weaves together history, biography, and science, exploring concepts like entanglement, superposition, and quantum theory’s revolutionary implications.
I found The Age of Entanglement brilliantly written and incredibly rich, though the complexity of the material sometimes made it a challenging read. Still, for anyone interested in the minds and ideas that redefined physics, it’s a deeply rewarding journey through the quantum world.
I found The Age of Entanglement brilliantly written and incredibly rich, though the complexity of the material sometimes made it a challenging read. Still, for anyone interested in the minds and ideas that redefined physics, it’s a deeply rewarding journey through the quantum world.
October 26, 2017
The concept of taking fragments of meetings, papers and conversations and creating a historical-fiction from it to teach us about both the physicists and their concepts was an interesting idea. It gave an entertaining view of how we got from here to there introducing many of the main players along the way. However, it didn't excel at either being a biography of any particular physicist, nor delving into their theories deeply enough to make me understand them. I guess it's kind of like one of those "Survey" courses with an interesting historical-fiction twist.
October 8, 2018
A fantastic human and scientific history of quantum mechanics. The author obviously (and admittedly) took a large number of liberties on the "details" of historic conversations, but it humanized the history in a very nice way. I found it somewhat repetitive, but this is realistic - once someone coins a good turn of phrase, they tend to use it several times. I haven't read a "human history of quantum" in a while, but this is one of the best from those I remember.
May 31, 2024
A great novel for those interested in the history of science and particularly 20th-century physics. As a physics student, I loved seeing all these familiar names as characters and Louisa Gilder does something great in capturing sentiments and conversations between these great minds. I found the back half a little slower to get through, but we could also blame history for that. This story truly captures the human element of science.
September 3, 2024
I really enjoyed this! Gilder reshapes mailed correspondence between physicists into the form of (imagined) vibrant live conversations, and I think this helps the reader better understand the *energy* behind these discussions. Over a century ago, physics was thrown into a state where nobody understood how things worked, and we're still struggling to understand how things really are, even while making computers (quantum or not) using the concrete things we've gleaned out of this mess.
September 5, 2018
Fantastic read. Rich narrative and vivid description of a complete arc of epic debates in the Physics community helps unveil the curtain on how the biggest and now mainstream ideas came to be despite all the struggle and long periods of being profoundly misunderstood. Getting a glimpse into the nature of personal relationships between the biggest scientific names is an added bonus.
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