The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery

by Abraham Pais

Abraham Pais is the author of the definitive biographies of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Indeed, his biography of Einstein was the winner of the 1983 American Book Award and was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the Best Books of the Year. As a distinguished theoretical
physicist who was a friend and colleague of Einstein and Bohr, Pais is able to blend a sophisticated understanding of physics with a first-hand knowledge of the private individual, offering us insights into both. It is this unique double perspective that makes his work so valuable.
Now, in The Genius of Science , Pais offers us insightful portraits of twelve of our century's most distinguished physicists, all of whom he has known personally. We meet, among others, the famously taciturn Paul Dirac; Max Born, who coined the term 'quantum mechanics'; Wolfgang Pauli, famed for
his exclusion principle and known as the conscience of twentieth-century physics; Mitchell Feigenbaum, inventor of chaos theory; and John von Neumann, one of the most influential mathematicians of the century. Other scientists profiled include Res Jost, Isidor Rabi, Viktor Weisskopf, and Eugene
Wigner. In addition, because their work is so relevant to the others discussed, Pais has included chapters on Einstein and Bohr, in each case giving the essence of the man's character and scientific achievement.
Throughout the volume, Pais illuminates the personalities and achievements of these stellar scientists. The result is virtually a who's who of 20th-century physics--a superb collection of portraits that sheds light on the physicists, their work, and their lasting influence on science.

Genres: Physics, Biography, Science, History Of Science, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2000

About the author

Abraham Pais was a physicist, specialising in particle physics, who became a well-known science historian later in life, having worked closely with prominent scientists such as Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.

Reviews

[Scott Bembenek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, Pais attempts to give you his unique insight and perspective into the lives and works of scientists. However, here most of the scientists are not well known. I think he does a good job rising to this challenge. Nonetheless, I would not recommend this as an introduction to Pais' work as I am convinced you need to be a bit of fan in this case. To that point, the fan in me wants to give this a 4 star rating but the realist is giving it 3 stars (at least for now). For a solid introduction to Pais' work pick up "Subtle is the lord ..." (to be sure, Pais pulls no punches with the physics in that book -- if you don't like, I would skip over it and enjoy the story that he tells throughout).

[Mallory · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of this book. In fact, I gave up trying to finish it halfway through because it felt like punishment.

First, I love the idea of it: a collection of short biographies of famous scientists (mainly physicists), written by a scientist. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the scientist who wrote it got the "biography" part. He states in his forward that he intends to cover both personal information and professional accomplishments, but he goes into extreme detail about each of the important contributions these great scientists made to (usually) the field of physics. He basically lays out each scientists scientific premises, complete with jargon, and including formulae. Cue me blanking out portions of the book, sometimes pages at a time. From that aspect, I do not recommend this book to anyone who doesn't understand physics. I'm sure for someone with a grasp on these concepts, the book would be much more interesting and enjoyable. For the average non-scientific person (i.e., me) this was not at all appropriate.

I also found Pais's writing style uneven, sometimes awkward, and not at all suited to biography. So, he knew and worked with many of these scientists, making the personal anecdotes some of my favorite parts of the book, but sometimes the random pieces of personal information he dropped in the book were completely out of place. He also tended to write his biographies like he was writing a scientific paper, complete with introduction that says: "I am going to be talking about scientist X who discovered Y. I will first discuss his early childhood, then his educational background, and finally cover his many accomplishments in the field of Z." I mean, very well done for writing in the style you know, but maybe you should expand on that if you're going to write in the biographical genre. I also felt Pais used this time to air academic grudges and peccadilloes and nitpick with scientists who are now mostly dead. Again, this was jarring to the overall flow of the stories being told. I know academics love to discuss and argue who and what is right and wrong in their particular field, but I think Pais could have kept that to his papers published in peer reviewed journals, and not a compilation of biographies. Unless he thought his only audience, ever by publishing this was going to be fellow scientists who could both understand what the hell he was talking about and cared about the points he would argue.

Overall, a good premise for a book, but appears to aim to a very narrow audience, not really for the general public.

[Perhaad Mistry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides an excellent review of all of Pais's friends in the post-WWII era and their contributions to modern physics.

It covers a healthy mix of personal matters and their contribution to physics both. It provides more mathematical background than Pais's book on Oppenheimer but *much* less than Subtle is Our Lord which I am reading now.

Everyone always knew about Einstein, Bohr, Von Neumann and Dirac, the nicest part of this book is the coverage of relatively lesser known heros like Robert Serber and T.D Lee and Kramer.

[Dan Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather patchy book consisting of a collection of essays on a number of leading 20th century physicists, all known by the the author. Perhaps half of the essays are actually re-treads of talks given by the author, for example at meetings held in memorial to the subject. Others were written specifically for this book and they read rather differently (and better). There's no attempt at a coherent line or narrative and there's a fair bit of duplication, as might be expected given the provenance.

As with some of the author's other works, there's a tendency to switch instantaneously from accessible material to stuff that even many physics graduates would, I suspect, fail to understand. This is a little odd and might be seen as a defect in such a book, although I quite like it as it gives a sense of the depth of the researches even if I have little idea what they mean! The timeline and narrative within each portrait is also sometimes a little confusing - almost as if they were written without a plan.

The author refers to most of the subjects as having been his friends and he is generally positive about all of them but not without pointing out some less positive features. I think that's a reasonable balance given the circumstances.

Worth a read to get short portraits of some of the scientists you may not have read much about.

[Tue Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pais offers a biographical sketch of a number of notable physicists---and, in the case of John von Neumann, a mathematician and polymath---from the twentieth century from the perspective of a colleague. With the exception of Albert Einstein, of whom he wrote an extensive scientific biography, people whom he knew best had a more detailed portrayal. Pais has also written a good biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.