It could be argued that the 20th century was the century of theoretical physics. The Genius of Science is, as its subtitle claims, a portrait gallery of 16 of the most interesting and eminent of the international physicists who helped change our view of the world--from Niels Bohr to Eugene Wigner. But the list of characters is much, much larger and interweaves most of the international network of physicists and other prominent scientists of the last century.
Author Abraham Pais, an eminent American theoretical physicist and professor at Rockefeller University, has written acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, two of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. Pais was acquainted with many of the people he writes about, and he often appears in the book as a shadowy figure in the background. Anyone can dip into The Genius of Science anywhere in its pages and be immediately grabbed by both the extraordinary and the ordinary aspects of the lives of these scientists.
|