Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World

by David Kaiser, Alan Lightman (Foreword)

The ideas at the root of quantum theory remain stubbornly, famously bizarre: a solid world reduced to puffs of probability; particles that tunnel through walls; cats suspended in zombielike states, neither alive nor dead; and twinned particles that share entangled fates. For more than a century, physicists have grappled with these conceptual uncertainties while enmeshed in the larger uncertainties of the social and political worlds around them, a time pocked by the rise of fascism, cataclysmic world wars, and a new nuclear age.
 
In Quantum Legacies, David Kaiser introduces readers to iconic episodes in physicists’ still-unfolding quest to understand space, time, and matter at their most fundamental. In a series of vibrant essays, Kaiser takes us inside moments of discovery and debate among the great minds of the era—Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking, and many more who have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature—as they have tried to make sense of a messy world.
 
Ranging across space and time, the episodes span the heady 1920s, the dark days of the 1930s, the turbulence of the Cold War, and the peculiar political realities that followed. In those eras as in our own, researchers’ ambition has often been to transcend the vagaries of here and now, to contribute lasting insights into how the world works that might reach beyond a given researcher’s limited view. In Quantum Legacies, Kaiser unveils the difficult and unsteady work required to forge some shared understanding between individuals and across generations, and in doing so, he illuminates the deep ties between scientific exploration and the human condition.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics

360 pages, Hardcover

Published April 3, 2020

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

David Kaiser is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Physics. He and his family live in Natick, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Aleksandar Cirkovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes good reading. Well written by David Kaiser, and it's clearly an advantage that he himself is deeply involved into the subject matter he is writing about. Although I'm clearly in no position to critique the author, I would critizise that for me personally, the author to some degree showed signs of vanity - the bragging with citation numbers, who wrote what first etc. I think it may be cultural, as the American culture is very much into competition, and this can rub off on the academic sector, too. But that's just a matter of taste, anyway - the ingredients are all there, and it's well written and mostly concise. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the recent history of Physics.

[Trevor Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich and engaging book. Kaiser makes complex ideas approachable through their historical contexts.

[meowdeleine]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11...

:) so fun

[LannyBobanny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book oddly had less to do with the origins of quantum mechanics (as one might expect from the title), and more to do with the history of science education from World War 2 through the end of the Cold War, with a second focus on contemporary research in particle physics and gravity. While I found these topics (especially the latter) interesting in their own right, they were not at all (especially the former) what I had anticipated.

[Najin Win · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant read couldn't put it down although I have to admit I purchased it based on the title and a quick skim of the accompanying text hoping to better my understanding of quantum mechanics and its surroundings. But it had not been as detailed as I would have hoped in that regard but I am glad I read this.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, written by a real nuclear scientist, starts in a promising way to explore the extraordinary physics underlying the quantum world of electron, photon, and other sub-atomic particles.

Unfortunately, it quickly veers off course into a series of essays about historical figures of physics, some contemporaries, and a smidgen of insight into some of the murkier subjects of physics like neutrinos, dark matter, and gravity. But there is little beyond the most superficial. For example, the essay on the Higgs boson does not explain how scientists narrowed down their investigation to actually find the boson, what they actually found, and provides a brief and confusing explanation on how the Higgs boson imparts mass.

Dr. Kaiser writes well but this book was too dumbed down for me.

[Alvaro Francisco Hidalgo Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays dealing in one way or another with Quantum Physics. I really enjoyed the third section of 4 about Matter. The other three were ok. More a book about the history of the field than Physics per se.

[Daniel Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not all the essays are consistently engrossing and narratively compelling, but those that strike big are a pleasure to read. Fascinating anecdotes and historical detail about the origins of modern physics pedagogy, as well good summaries of lesser known developments in the standard model.

[Dan'S_mind]

David Kaiser\
https://www.ropipublications.com/%ce%...

[Τάσος Γέροντας · Rating 4 out of 5]

Προσωπικά νομίζω πως η τελευταία πρόταση του προτελευταίου κεφαλαίου συνοψίζει την ουσία αυτού του υπέροχου βιβλίου: Με υπομονή, επιμονή και τύχη, μπορούμε κάποιες φορές να ρίξουμε μια κλεφτή ματιά στο πιο θεμελιώδες επίπεδο της φύσης.

Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο! Παρουσιάζει συναρπαστικά, γοητευτικά, επεξηγηματικά την κβαντική, την πρόοδό της, τους ανθρώπους της. Γραφή ανάλαφρη, πνευματώδης, σαφής, κατανοητή. Από την αρχή της ανάγνωσης με ενθουσίασε, προχωρώντας μέχρι το τέλος με συνεπήρε. Όσο και να κατέχετε την κβαντική ή όσο ξένη και να σας είναι, αυτό το βιβλίο θα το απολαύσετε.

«Οι φυσικοί κατασκεύαζαν ολοένα και μεγαλύτερες μηχανές για να δοκιμάσουν τις ιδιότητες της ύλης σε ολοένα και μικρότερες κλίμακες.»

«Η γάτα του Σραίντινγκερ λοιπόν θα πρέπει να μας θυμίζει κάτι παραπάνω από τη σαγηνευτική παραδοξότητα της κβαντομηχανικής. Θα πρέπει να μας θυμίζει πως και οι επιστήμονες είναι, σαν κι εμάς, άνθρωποι οι οποίοι νιώθουν και φοβούνται.»

https://exostis.gr/article/%CE%BA%CF%...