Quantum Profiles

by Jeremy Bernstein

For the prominent science writer Jeremy Bernstein, the profile is the most congenial way of communicating science. Here, in what he labels a "series of conversations carried on in the reader's behalf and my own," he evokes the tremendous intellectual excitement of the world of modern physics, especially the quantum revolution. Drawing on his well-known talent for explaining the most complex scientific ideas for the layperson, Bernstein gives us a lively sense of what the issues of quantum mechanics are and of various ways in which individual physicists approached them.

The author begins this series of interconnected profiles by describing the life and work of John Stewart Bell, the brilliant physicist employed at the gigantic elementary particle laboratory near Geneva (CERN), whose "Bell's Inequality" inspired a generation of researchers to confront, by experiment, just how peculiar and counterintuitional quantum mechanics really is. Bernstein then discusses the career of the prodigiously active and creative John Archibald Wheeler, who worked in the beginning stages of almost every branch of contemporary physics and invented the terms "black hole," "ergo-sphere," "geon," "Planck length," and "stellarator." The book closes with a moving commentary on the correspondence, of fifty-two years duration, between Einstein and the gentle, talented, but little-known Swiss engineer Michele Angelo Besso. "Of all the Einstein letters I have read these are surely the most striking, on a purely human level," writes Bernstein of the Einstein-Besso correspondence. "Einstein was not given to close friendships--`the merely personal,' as he once put it--but these letters are filled with `the merely personal,' even though the deep issues of physics and its philosophy are never very far away."

Genres: Science

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting take on profiling scientists. Bernstein digs deep into the lives of two of the most significant quantum physicists of the 20th century - John Steward Bell and John Archibald Wheeler. Bell was most famous for formulating his Bell's Theorem that demonstrated the non-localness of entangled quantum particles if the predictions of quantum theory are correct. Wheeler's fame came from so many branches of physics - mostly quantum mechanics and general relativity - coining the terms 'black holes' and 'worm holes'.

Interestingly, the profiles are somewhat personal interview accounts by both about the paths they followed and what that meant to their lives that gives more insight than what you might find in a biography. What I found unusual, and may have been some of the inspiration for this book, was that Bernstein was able to elicit commentary from both about Einstein's refusal to believe that quantum mechanics was a complete theory. Both knew Einstein and his beliefs. In fact the final chapter was a brief biography of Michele Angelo Besso - a lifelong friend of Einstein who may have been instrumental in helping Einstein formulate his first theories while both worked at the patent office together. Whether Besso provided any insight remains unclear, but, he most certainly was a sounding board for Einstein.

Why this final epilogue was provided was a bit strange in the book - but, it seems to be focused on how scientists who grew up with quantum mechanics had no problem with its apparent probabilistic and non-local behavior vs. Einstein's adamant belief in an underlying realism that has yet to be discovered.

[Richard]

Not what I was expecting. It was essentially historical and about the personalities of those people involved in the making of quantum theory. Not much about the theory itself. This is a library book, btw, which is overdue by maybe 10 years.

[m · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bernstein's a good writer.