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Rabi: Scientist and Citizen With a New Preface
This is a welcome reissue with a new Preface of John Rigden's stellar biography of I.I. Rabi, one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. Rabi's discovery of the magnetic resonance method won him the Nobel Prize in 1944 and stimulated research leading to, among other things, refinements in quantum electrodynamics, refined molecular beam methods, radio astronomy with the hydrogen 21-cm line, atomic clocks and solid state lasers.
- GenresBiography
342 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 11, 2016
Rabi was an interesting guy and the book was an interesting read. It was done while he was an old man, and with his cooperation. The benefit of that is that much of the book is direct quotations from the subject. The downside is that I suspect it limited the author's ability and inclination to evaluate and analyze.
That said, I knew very little about Rabi before reading the book, and now I feel like I have some sense who he was and why he mattered. Also some sense how science worked in the 1920s and 1930s. Apparently if you already had funding, it was possible to just "show up" in Europe, go to a famous professor, and start work as a postdoc. Rabi did this, visiting, in succession, Pauli, Bohr, and Heisenberg.
Another big surprise is that Heisenberg lobbied hard to get Rabi hired at Columbia in 1929. This is surprising and impressive, since Rabi was Jewish and Heisenberg would later be comfortable working with the Nazis.
The topics are a bit uneven. There's a whole chapter about Rabi and Oppenheimer. There's almost nothing about his personal life. He had children, who are mentioned only inasmuch as we hear about how his research was going at the time. But I'd like to know what he was like as a husband and father. What was he like as a friend? This feels more like a professional profile and biography than it does like a portrait of the man in full.
That said, I knew very little about Rabi before reading the book, and now I feel like I have some sense who he was and why he mattered. Also some sense how science worked in the 1920s and 1930s. Apparently if you already had funding, it was possible to just "show up" in Europe, go to a famous professor, and start work as a postdoc. Rabi did this, visiting, in succession, Pauli, Bohr, and Heisenberg.
Another big surprise is that Heisenberg lobbied hard to get Rabi hired at Columbia in 1929. This is surprising and impressive, since Rabi was Jewish and Heisenberg would later be comfortable working with the Nazis.
The topics are a bit uneven. There's a whole chapter about Rabi and Oppenheimer. There's almost nothing about his personal life. He had children, who are mentioned only inasmuch as we hear about how his research was going at the time. But I'd like to know what he was like as a husband and father. What was he like as a friend? This feels more like a professional profile and biography than it does like a portrait of the man in full.
June 19, 2017
Such a well written book! One of the best biographies I have ever read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews