Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory

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Summary: A great book from the master!
Review: A reprinted Dover edition of a lovely set of biographies of the physicists of the Golden Period, from the pen of George Gamow. The original 1966 edition has been out of print for a number of years. This 1985 edition is beautifully reproduced, and it includes fascinating pictures, sketches, and poems, done by Gamow himself. He was born in Odessa, in what was then Russia, --before the Soviet Union. The story of his escape to the West is straight out of a thriller. Only it is real! Later in the US, Gamow was referred to by a journalist,--- some time during the Cold War, as "the only scientist in America with a real sense of humor". With his lovely books, we have now all come to experience how Gamow can take the most technical stuff and make it simple. Fun too! The book:--Intellectual treats, whimsy, but deep. It contains penetrating and personal biographies of Niels Bohr, Paul Ehrenfest, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein, and recollections from the conferences in the 1930ties in Copenhagen, Brussels, and in the Solvay Institute. Illustrated with lovely drawings by Gamow himself. A book with pictures and conversations! Much of it can be understood by a child, and other parts might require a little concentration. All of it is great fun. The author Gamow started in nuclear physics, during the Golden Age of Physics, worked with Niels Bohr, then later in the US, on the Manhattan Project during WWII, and after the war, he was professor in Boulder Colorado. He has a building on campus named after him! The books he wrote are pearls, and they have been equally popular with my parent's generation as with mine. Luckely some have been reprinted! Other Gamow titles: Biography of Physics, Atomic Energy [dedicated to the hope of lasting peace], Physics of the Strapless Evning Gown,...We are lucky that Dover has reprinted some of them. Gamow's list of scientific accomplishments includes a 1948 landmark paper on the origin of chemical elements, the Big Bang model, and later work with F. Crick on DNA and genetic coding.-- Do more Gamow editions, Dover!

Rating:
Summary: "I've never bored a reader"
Review: Actually this is the motto of a great Italian writer, Leonardo Sciascia. But, in the domain of science, no one better than Gamow lived to it. The great Russian-born physicist, educated by Bohr, reviews the birth of quantum mechanics and its first applications as an insider, with great panache and as much accuracy as is allowed "by complementarity" (which concept, complementarity, he explains brilliantly). He did everything brilliantly. Once, studying, with the great Brazilian theorist Mario Schenberg, ways of very efficient energy dissipation needed in the stars, they proposed that the energy should flow out in the form of neutrinos. This eventually became the well-known URCA model. Gamow named it after a famous casino at Rio de Janeiro, where money dissipated very efficiently too, at the green tables.Gamow is also the originator of the Big-Bang model of the universe, which is called by many "Gamow's cosmology". A great scientist, a great writer, a great wit!

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Summary: Quantum Theory Plus Gamowian Humor - A Great Combination
Review: George Gamow's "Thirty Years That Shook Physics" is an exceptional book, an entertaining look at the physicists (including himself) that participated in the unveiling of quantum theory.

His book is enlivened by unique photos of the great physicists and mathematicians, their families and friends. We see Niels Bohr and his wife on a motorcycle, Wolfgang Pauli and George Gamow (in lederhosen) on a steamer on a Swiss Lake, Werner Heisenberg in swim trunks, Enrico Fermi playing tennis without a shirt, George Gamow and Leon Rosenfeld resting on a snow covered peak (supposedly discussing nuclear physics), and Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein chatting at a technical session in Brussels.

Many contemporary books on physics for the layman, following publisher's dictates, scrupulously avoid all mathematics. Writing in the 1960's, Gamow assumed that algebraic equations, graphs, and diagrams of experimental setups would actually help clarify explanations and not send readers fleeing in panic. Algebra is necessary; more advanced math is not. Gamow is fun to read, but be prepared to think.

It is amusing how many of the Amazon reviewers mention that they first encountered Gamow in their youth. I too read Gamow, reveling in the excitment of scientific work and discovery.

Gamow adds a bit of fun and comedy to science. We all learn (but may have forgotten) about the Pauli Exclusion Principle that only two electrons with opposite spins can occupy the same quantum orbit. Gamow also introduces us to a lessor known observation, the Pauli Effect, which states that the mere presence of Wolfgang Pauli, a theoretical physicist, near a laboratory ensured that the experimental apparatus would break.

Gamow concludes his history of quantum theory with a light-hearted play created by students of Niels Bohr and presented one evening during technical meetings in 1932 in Copenhagen. "The theme of this dramatic masterpiece has Pauli (Mephistopheles) trying to sell to the unbelieving Ehrenfest (Faust) the idea of a weightless neutrino (Gretchen)."

Gamow has remained in print since the 1960's, due largely to his unique style and for his obvious enthusiasm for physics and for people that do physics. I heartily recommend this book for the layman, and for any student of science, high school or college.

Recently, his popular "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" and "Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom" have been released again, with some updates for recent discoveries. A typical review claims: "will vastly fascinate the whimsical, and is also scientific". Don't miss Gamow.

Rating:
Summary: Personal account of Quantum Theory from one who participated
Review: I first read this back in high school. I loved it. Yeah, I'm a science geek. This book is not only a wonderful account of the history and science of quantum theory (from 1900 through 1930), but of Dr. Gamow's personal and professional associations with those who made it all happen. The black and white photographs are an added bonus. My favorite is of Neils Bohr out for a motorcycle ride with his wife.

Please note that my review is based on the Doubleday/Anchor version from 1966. Does the later version contain the photographs? I don't know.

Rating:
Summary: A Book for Future Physicists
Review: I turned to this volume to get a clearer idea of some basic notions involved in quantum theory, but found it much less accessible than I had expected it to be. Though this is often thought of as a "popular" book, Gamow does not really write for a lay audience. The introduction concludes: "The author hopes that the new generation of physicists will find some interesting information in the pages that follow." It is for these physicists that Gamow writes.

*The Thirty Years That Shook Physics* began in 1900 because it was then that Planck proposed that light comes in discrete packages, or quanta. However, there was no comparable event to justify the closure implied in the title. Rather, Gamow chose the number thirty because quantum theory bogged down around 1930 in "tremendous difficulties." (He anticipated that this "stalemate" would be "broken up -- maybe next year [i.e. 1966], maybe in the year A.D. 2000.")

Gamow almost completely ignores both the technological consequences and the metaphysical implications of the theories he discusses so compactly, and not a single sentence hints at the ethical problems faced by science in the twentieth century or the tragic dimensions of this chapter of human history. The humorous adaptation of Goethe's *Faust* at the end of the book, which takes up one-quarter of its pages, is symptomatic of a rather boyish lack of sensibility that seems to have pervaded 20th-century physics before World War II.

Despite the book's limitations, the author's personal acquaintance with many of the figures discussed enlivens his pages with amusing anecdotes and makes it an enjoyable read, even for the non-physicist. The raucous parody of *Faust* provides a sort of light dessert to the heavy, but always flavorful, meal that precedes it.

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Summary: The history of quantum theory ...
Review: It made me smile and misty eyed to see how Gamow has inspired so many of us. I gave my nephew a copy of this book, it is the greatest gift I could think to give him.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoying the book but
Review: Makes me wish I stayed awake in Math class. Some of the text is made up of formulas that make my head spin. However I am enjoying reading the stories of the men and their reasoning behind the explinations of how the world works at the atomic level versus the "real world " physics of Newton and others. Definitely a time when what we knew to be true was vastly different from what was actually true.

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Summary: The story of quantum theory:
Review: The first three decades of the twentieth century saw history's most concentrated burst of human knowledge of nature. The world described by the greatest of scientists, Isaac Newton, changed quickly to a very strange and startling world described notably by Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Pauli, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, Fermi, and a few others. George Gamow was one of these individuals. His lucent knowledge of the important ideas of the quantum theories and of the men who developed these ideas, makes for very interesting reading.
In his "Thirty Years that Shook Physics," Gamow the physicist is also found to be Gamow the artist -- his excellent drawings augment the narrative -- and Gamow the light hearted humorist. Because of the author's close friendships with Bohr and Pauli (and to a lesser extent, Dirac) the reader will meet not only the thoughts of these characters, but the characters themselves. It seems that quantum physicists like to have fun too. The book concludes with an illustrated text of a play composed and performed at the 1932 Copenhagen conference, although it can be followed it is something of an 'inside joke', if you will.
The book was written in 1965 and Gamow, noting difficulties with quantum theory, expected to see a new and equally radical revolution in physical theories before the end of the century. Although quantum theory has been hugely successful in its application, a new theory is still anticipated. [M-theory?] This book is an excellent account of the emergence of quantum theory, presented in the words of one of its principals.