That book is amazing, speaking as a non-physicist. (Fine, I did study maths, so I suppose I'm almost qualified as a theoretical physicist, except I'm not good enough at maths ;)
Really recommend it to anybody who's interested in that part of history. Amazing writing, and an incredible story. (You know it's gripping when you read about some of the experiments and feverishly hope they don't blow themselves up, nevermind knowing the outcome)
Second that. It's an awesome book that explains pretty much everything when it comes to physics. As for the math, it's true that they're hard but you should really give it another try since the second part of the book has less equations and more text.
Thanks for the recommendation, I just grabbed a copy.
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut was that book for me this year. It's an odd blend of fact and fiction covering a handful of 20th century physics and math discoveries. Alexander Grothendieck, Einstein, Schrödinger and Heisenberg all appear.
A really excellent series if you like math and physics. It gets bad reviews because most readers aren’t looking for a physics text disguised as a novel. Personally, I love it.
That book is totally mindblowing, and obliterates artificial boundaries between physics and mathematics. It also (in the older Dover editions) had a cover where the phase portrait on the front looked like two angry eyes glaring at you that you hadn't learned enough math yet.
I should really pick that one up some day. It had an inspiring story, I believe the author wanted to understand the classical mechanics and just wrote them out in Scheme.
To be completely honest, the beginning is a bit tough. IIRC it focuses mostly on Niels Bohr, his life, and his philosophical approach to quantum physics.
Once the book centers itself around Leo Szilard, things start to pick up. Having said this, I agree with the previous comment. The book is amazing. Disclaimer: I listened to it in audiobook format through Audible
I'll second this, along with its follow up book. I read it close to a year ago and the description of the particle unfolding into higher dimensions has still stuck with me.
Really recommend it to anybody who's interested in that part of history. Amazing writing, and an incredible story. (You know it's gripping when you read about some of the experiments and feverishly hope they don't blow themselves up, nevermind knowing the outcome)
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