E=mc2 (33 page)

The second chapter of
Science and the Enlightenment
by Thomas Hankins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985) is the best start for the Leibniz/du Châtelet/Newton issues, while I. O. Wade's
Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941) is not quite as dry as the title suggests. Steven Shapin's essay "Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes,"
Isis, 72,
(1981), pp. 187-215, widens the intellectual struggles, as does, even more, his polemical reinterpretation
The Scientific Revolution
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Carolyn Iltis's "Madame du Châtelet's metaphysics and mechanics," in
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 8
(1977), pp. 29-48, is a more conventional extending of the historical setting, and fits well with the intriguing "Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers: Concepts of Matter in Eighteenth-Century Thought," by P. M. Heimann and J. E. McGuire, in
Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 5
(1971), pp. 233-306. To situate the Château at Cirey as a research institution and show what an intellectually adventurous couple could produce, it would be hard to find more apt authors than Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, joint writers
of Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities
(London: HarperCollins, 1999).

Einstein and the Equation

Einstein

I have a weakness for some of the early biographies of Einstein: as with old movies, the very nature of their presentation captures something of the period in which their subject lived, which few currently produced items could match. Two biographies that Einstein himself especially liked are
Einstein: His Life and Times,
by Philipp Frank (New York: Knopf, 1947), his successor at Prague; and
Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography,
by Carl Seelig, trans, by Mervyn Savill (London: Staples Press, 1956). Seelig was a journalist and friend of the family who corresponded with Einstein for years.

Of more recent works, Banesh Hoffmann's
Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel
(New York: Viking, 1972) is the ideal introductory mix of biography and scientific background. For the early years,
The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity,
by Lewis Pyenson (Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985) shows what thoughtful academic work can achieve, as with Pyenson's hunting out the detailed workings of the family firm Einstein grew up within, and noting his uncle's development of a measuring device that depended on verifying the signals from two independent clocks—a key part, once the issue is pondered over, of the reasoning behind special relativity. Another ingenious probing is in Robert Schulmann's "Einstein at the Patent Office: Exile, Salvation or Tactical Retreat"; in a special edition of
Science in Context,
vol. 6, number i (1993), pp. 17-24.

For the cultural setting, very few scientists or historians of science can match the depth of insight which Fritz Stern—one of America's great historians—brings out in the long third chapter of his
Einstein s German World
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), or his earlier "Einstein's Germany" in
Albert Einstein, Historical and Cultural Perspectives,
ed. Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 319-43. One who does reach Stern's heights is Abraham Pais, whose own life has been a mirror of much of what the twentieth century has had to offer, and whose
"Subtle Is the Lord. . .": The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) is probably the last account we'll have from a researcher who knew Einstein well. It's built on a close reading of Einstein's papers,
so
it is more technical than this book, but it's a thorough, reasoned evaluation.

The other standout thinker in Einstein studies is Gerald Holton, who has kept a freshness and depth of insight in his work extending now for more than forty years. I especially recommend his
The Advancement of Science, and its Burdens
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986, 1998), as well as
Einstein, History, and Other Passions
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996).

In addition to the Veblen essay, Claude Levi-Strauss's little pamphlet "Race and History," reprinted in his
Structural Anthropology,
Vol. 2 (New York: Penguin, 1977) elaborates on ways profound ideas can emerge from the colliding of cultures; Mary Douglas's classic
Purity and Danger
(New York: Routledge, 1966) takes a deeper look at the powerful potentialities of conceptual and social fissures. Nikon Bonder's
Yiddishe Kop: Creative Problem Solving in Jewish Learning Lore and Humor
(Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999) is an oddly near-mystical account of an intriguing cultural habit, while Howard Gardner's essay "The Creators' Patterns" in
Dimensions of Creativity, ed.
Margaret A. Boden (Cambridge, Mass: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press), pp. 143-58, brings us back to Earth, putting Einstein and Besso in the context of Freud with Fliess, Martha Graham with Louis Horst, and other innovators who needed a supportive friend in their initial years-long period of seeming isolation, even while their later breakthroughs were somehow privately being prepared.

Physics Introductions

For the underlying physics, the ideal thing is to spend a summer with an introductory calculus book, after which all freshman university physics texts suddenly open up. But since life is short, and not everyone has the spare summer, Robert Mills (of Yang-Mills fame) wrote the seemingly easygoing yet quite powerful
Space, Time and Quanta: An Introduction to Contemporary Physics
(New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1994), which can provide that freshman-level introduction even for readers who bring no calculus with them.

On a less technical level, an excellent compilation is Timothy Ferris's
The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991). It offers gracefully written essays, often by the key practitioners— there's even a four-page account of E=mc
²
by Einstein himself.

The Physics of Star Trek
by Lawrence Kraus (New York: Basic Books, 1995) takes another fresh approach: E=mc
²
, for example, is discussed there in terms of the difficulties a real-life Scottie would face in responding to Captain Kirk's command, "Beam me up." Kraus's later
Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed
(New York: Basic Books, 1994) develops some of the physics more systematically.
Dance for Two: Selected Essays,
by Alan Lightman (London: Bloomsbury, 1996) is a brightly written account of selected topics: the title essay, for example, describes Newton's laws in terms of the grinding jolts of the whole earth as it moves up or down (ever
so
slightly!) in response to the leaps of a single ballerina on its surface.

The Strange Case of Mrs. Hudson's Cat: Or Sherlock Holmes Solves the Einstein Mysteries,
by Colin Bruce (New York: Vintage, 1998) is the sort of book other authors berate themselves for not having thought of first. Bruce has written a series of Holmes and Watson stories, each of which depends for its resolution on a basic principle from physics. Watson bumbles, Baker Street is fogged in, Professor Challenger is perfidious—and learning is effortless.

Special Relativity Introductions

The Time and Space of Uncle Albert,
by Russell Stannard (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), imagines a series of teasing conversations between a kindly Uncle Albert and his trendy niece Gedanken. It's advertised as aimed for teens or even preteens, but it's an excellent start for adults.
Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland,
by George Gamow (various editions), has a similarly sweet touch. Instead of analyzing the whys of the equation, at least at first, Gamow simply places an imaginary befuddled bank clerk within the settings that relativity and other branches of physics describe. (His work has been updated by Russell Stannard in
The New World of Mr. Tompkins
[New York: Cambridge University, 1999].
Einstein's Legacy: The Unity of Space and Time,
by Julian Schwinger (Basingstoke, England: Freeman, 1986) moves up a level,
giving
a clear and eloquently written account of relativity and the equation; The Wald and Geroch texts mentioned on page 318 apply as well.

Newton

Of the many Newton biographies, I'd start with A. Rupert Hall's
Isaac Newton: Adventurer in Thought
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). The Norton critical anthology
Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries,
ed. I. Bernard Cohen and Richard S. Westfall (New York: Norton, 1995) gives copious extracts from Newton, as well as samplings of the twentieth-century secondary literature, from Keynes and Koyre to Westfall and Schaffer. It's the best guide to going further.

Into the Atom (Chapters 8 and 9)

C. P. Snow's fourteen-page essay on Rutherford in his
Variety of Men
(London: Macmillan, 1968) sounds as if you're hearing an insider whispering to you what really happened at the Cavendish lab in the glory days. There's Rutherford's bluff grandstanding—when told he was always on the crest of the wave, he boomed, "Well, after all, I made the wave, didn't I?!" But there are also the hesitancies underneath, as with Rutherford's quiet, suddenly blurted insistence that certain overseas scholarship funds be continued: "If it had not been for them, I shouldn't have been."

After Snow's essay, try
Rutherford
by A. S. Eve (London: Macmillan, 1939) for further recounting of the early days. Despite the less-than-ingenious title,
Rutherford
by Mark Oliphant (New York: Elsevier, 1972) is an original and intense work, getting across Rutherford's fury—and then embarrassed half-apologies—as he saw the world-dominating research unit he'd created slowly start to break, not least through character flaws of his own. Oliphant was one of the last of Rutherford's promising young students, and the individual who kick-started Briggs to get the U.S. atomic bomb project going; after a distinguished post-war career that included decades of working against nuclear weapons, he died shortly before his ninety-ninth birthday, just weeks before this book was going to press.

The Neutron and the Bomb: A Biography of Sir James Chadwick,
by Andrew Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), is suitably neutral
to
match the discoverer of the neutron. It goes into the early years thoroughly enough though to show how the quiet Chadwick became one of the only individuals to stand up to both Oppenheimer
and
Groves—thus giving him a key role in the success of the Manhattan Project. The way that the bitter rivalries at the end between Chadwick and his mentor Rutherford were carried out through the mercilessly taut coolness between their wives is best, however, in Oliphant's account.

Atoms in the Family,
by Laura Fermi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), is an account of Fermi by his wife, who has something of the sweetly teasing tone of Einstein's sister. For more on the scientific background and personality of this quietly driven man, there's
Enrico Fermi, Physicist,
by Emilio Segre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). The evocative essay "Fermi's group and the recapture of Italy's place in physics," in
The Scientific Imagination,
by Gerald Holton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) goes into the Rome research group in detail, including the importance of Fermi's having found an all-powerful bureaucratic protector.

How did Rutherford and Fermi manage to sustain such powerful research centers? Edward Shils's
Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) is good on the standard sociological backing, while J. H. Brown's "Spatial variation in abundance,"
Ecology 76
(1995), pp- 2028-43, is an interesting demonstration of the way low competitive pressure can be excellent for fresh speciation.
The Economic Laws of Scientific Research
by Terence Kealey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996) takes a quirkily refreshing approach, showing, for example, how pharmaceutical firms and other research groups regularly profit from hiring top scientists who think they're going to do original work, but in fact are useful simply because they can intelligently sieve the available literature.

Lise Meitner: A Life In Physics,
by Ruth Lewin Sime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) is clear on the background, and also takes a justly strong feminist line; see also the first-rate essay on Meitner by Sallie Watkins in
A Devotion to Their Science, ed.
Marlene F. and Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham (Toronto: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997). They're the ideal backing for Meitner's own brief account "Looking Back,"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 20
(Nov. 1964), pp. 2-7. Otto Frisch's autobiography
What Little I Remember
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) is a delightful view from this gentler man;
Aging and Old Age
by Richard Posner (Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1995) is a fresh take on the role of sunk costs in long research careers.

Building the Bomb (Chapters 10-13)

In 1943, armed guards from the United States Army would have taken a strikingly personal interest in any outsider who tried to copy Robert Serber's lectures for arriving scientists at Los Alamos—for those lectures surveyed everything that was then known about building atomic weapons. Copies are now somewhat more conveniently available in Serber's
The Los Alamos Primer
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). Along with all the lectures, now declassified, the book contains Serber's own excellent annotations and reminiscences. It's the ideal way to capture the working mood at Los Alamos.

On Oppenheimer, the best source is
Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections, ed.
Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner (Palo Alto, Calif: Stanford University Press pbk 1995; orig. Harvard University Press, 1980). The letters are almost shatteringly direct: there are the brief moments of intellectual joy; then the self-torments, the insecurities, and the layers upon layers of posturing. How he and Lawrence overcame their own warinesses to become best friends—and then exhausted, dismayed enemies—is the drama in Nuel Phar Davis's masterpiece
Lawrence and Oppenheimer
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1969). Richard Feynman's best-selling reminiscences
"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" ed.
Edward Hutchings (New York: Norton, 1985) are vivid on the personal level; James Gleick's
Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics
(New York: Pantheon, 1992), gives a far richer story of what Feynman and others experienced on the mesa.