Review by Choice Review
Often it seems that people outside science do not realize what a messy undertaking science can be. Scientists are human beings like everyone else and are affected by political, psychological, and sociological pressures. Theorists are not simply isolated individuals ciphering at a chalkboard. In this book, Halpern (physics, Univ. of the Sciences in Philadelphia), author of Edge of the Universe (CH, May'13, 50-4974), explores the evolving personal and professional relationship between Einstein and Schrödinger. He does an excellent job of tracing how their shared worldview affected their approach to quantum mechanics and their mutual desire to challenge the Copenhagen interpretation. Many readers will be surprised by the discussions of the failures of these two great scientists in trying to find a unified theory and how it eventually led to their estrangement. That Einstein had openly proposed a unified theory that got much public attention only to have it demonstrated to be incorrect and that Schrödinger--to even more fanfare years later--did the same makes for an intriguing tale. More important to Halpern's study is that these incidents arguably led to the personal rift between these friends. Assuming no science background from his audience, Halpern explains the necessary background physics to follow the evolution of the ideas. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --Eric Kincanon, Gonzaga University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
on A cold January day in 1947, Erwin Schrödinger took the podium at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin and triumphantly announced that he had succeeded where Albert Einstein had failed for the past 30 years. Schrödinger said he'd devised a unified theory of everything that reconciled the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. His announcement caused a sensation in the international press, which shamelessly played up the David and Goliath angle, much to Schrödinger's discomfort and Einstein's irritation. It nearly destroyed their longstanding friendship. Matters became so acrimonious at one point, with rumors of potential lawsuits, that another colleague, Wolfgang Pauli, stepped in to mediate. A full three years would pass before the estranged friends gingerly began exchanging letters again. This tale of two physicists, their shared quest for unification and the media frenzy that tore them apart is the focus of Paul Halpern's latest book, "Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat." The men were natural allies. Both were Nobel laureates, recognized for foundational work in the earliest days of quantum mechanics. Each had a strong philosophical bent, which shaped his worldview. Einstein favored the work of Spinoza, while Schrödinger had an affinity for Schopenhauer and dabbled in Eastern mysticism. Those philosophical influences contributed to their mutual dislike of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, despite its stunning experimental success. Einstein wasn't shy about voicing his objections, famously declaring that God "does not play dice," which prompted Niels Bohr to retort, "Stop telling God what to do!" Schrödinger vacillated a bit more in his stance - maintaining, Halpern says, "a quantum superposition of contrasting views" - but did ruefully confess, "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." To highlight the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, he proposed his famous cat paradox. At its heart, this is also the tale of two equations: Einstein's equation of general relativity and Schrödinger's wave equation, governing the realms of the very large and the very small. The physicist Paul Dirac reconciled the wave equation with special relativity in 1928, sharing the Nobel Prize with Schrödinger for his efforts. But general relativity thus far has resisted all efforts at being similarly assimilated into a complete theory of quantum gravity. To fully understand why requires delving into some very heady, mathematically dense material. Halpern, a physicist at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, does his best to ground the casual reader with creative analogies and prose peppered with flashes of wit. Negatively curved (hyperbolic) space-time - usually described as a saddle shape - becomes "a curvy potato chip" for those whose "tastes are more epicurean than equestrian." Max Planck's notion of quanta is envisioned as "filling a piggy bank with a pile of coins of various denominations," while Schrödinger's wave equation is akin to "a scanner that processes wave functions and in some cases reads out their energy value and keeps them, while in other cases it discards them." Many a physics graduate student has gnashed her teeth in frustration over the mathematics of general relativity. Perhaps she should try envisioning a flat, boundless desert, with rocks of various sizes scattered across its surface, whose mass creates dips of various depths in the sand. A sturdy canopy looms over that desert, stretched tightly over a skeleton of tent poles linked by bars, matching the rises and dips in the sand beneath it. The desert is all the matter and energy in the universe, while the canopy is the geometry of spacetime. The poles and bars are the equations of general relativity, connecting the stuff of the universe with the shape of the universe. As Halpern writes: "Mass and energy warp space-time, telling it where and how to curve. The shape of space-time, in turn, governs how things move within it." Despite this knack for clear explication, such moments are all too often preceded by large chunks of technical, jargon-filled prose and dry rehashings of well-traveled historical ground. The first half of the book in particular suffers in this respect; there is little that is new to surprise and delight the reader. The one fresh twist is the media angle, and Halpern's writing shines when he returns to this theme, most notably in a lively chapter devoted to the dangers of conducting physics by press release in the eagerness to unseat Einstein. It remains a relevant issue, evidenced by the so-called faster-than-light-neutrinos fiasco a few years ago when a European experiment called OPERA stunned the world with a premature public announcement that it had clocked neutrinos traveling fractions of a second faster than the speed of light - an apparent violation of Einstein's cosmic speed limit. (That result was later shown to be a calibration error, not a violation of relativity.) for all the media excitement over Einstein's attempts at unification, Halpern rightly notes that his peers were largely indifferent. Mainstream physics left him behind as the Standard Model of particle physics took shape, and the mathematical approaches once explored by Einstein and Schrödinger have long since given way to string theory and loop quantum gravity, two of the most promising candidates for quantum gravity. Should physicists ultimately succeed where they failed, will that be sufficient to wholly describe our universe? Halpern suspects not, because there are still many open questions in physics; he cites the mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy as examples. Yet they will persevere, just like Einstein, who asked for a pencil and his notes the day before he died so he could continue to work on his calculations - tilting at windmills to the bitter end in his quixotic quest for unification. JENNIFER OUELLETTE is the author, most recently, of "Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 26, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
A singular genius, Einstein recognized in Erwin Schrödinger a kindred spirit, writing to the Austrian scientist in 1946, You are my nearest brother, and your brain runs so similar to mine. Armchair physicists may know how Einstein raged against a quantum universe governed by a dice-throwing deity. They may even know how the German titan vainly strove to render that universe irrelevant by formulating a new relativity fusing all fundamental forces. What Halpern plucks from obscurity is the revealing backstory of how Einstein claimed an improbable intellectual sibling in his quixotic fight against quantum randomness. Famous for challenging his colleagues with a thought experiment focused on a cat simultaneously alive and dead, Schrödinger emerges in this narrative of brotherhood as a brilliant intellect but a mercurial personality. Indeed, only emotional volatility can account for the way the younger scientist unintentionally forfeits his brotherhood with Einstein through foolish boasts about his own superior achievement in authoring a supposed master theory of the universe. A tale of cosmic ambitions in earthbound men.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Halpern (Edge of the Universe) attempts his own grand unification in this look at the lives, work, and friendship of two giants of physics. He details the romances, careers, and politics of contemporaries Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger from their earliest childhood brushes with science to their deaths, updating what is known of Einstein's life thanks to a recently released trove of early letters. Both Einstein and Schrödinger staunchly believed that randomness had no place in a theory that described the universe and spent much of their later years futilely crafting explanations that failed to fully explain reality. Halpern, himself a physics professor, is challenged by the task of summarizing and explaining the work of his two principal subjects, as well as that of every other serious physicist of the 20th century. Quantum physics, even in précis form, is a level beyond rocket science, and the author does his best, even giving a taste of current progress in the field. Like this pair of geniuses, Halpern has his own difficulties with quantum theory, but as he notes of Einstein and Schrödinger, "even the most brilliant scientists are human." Agent: Giles Anderson, Anderson Literary Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Halpern (physics, Univ. of the Sciences, Philadelphia; Collider; Brave New Universe) describes a clash between Einstein and fellow Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The two men, who previously corresponded and were supportive of each other's work, differed when it came to their ideas for a theory unifying gravity and electromagnetism. The ensuing media firestorm is related by Halpern and intertwined with events from the men's lives and events in the wider world. (LJ 2/15/15) © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The history of a grand theorythe theory of everything, aka the unified field theorythat never achieved flight and the two household names that kicked the fledgling theory from the nest before its time.This is a solid story of how scientific progress is achieved, or not, incorporating the mindsets Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrdinger brought to the creation and elaboration of their various theories in physics. With verve, Halpern (Physics/Univ. of the Sciences in Philadelphia; Edge of the Universe: A Voyage to the Cosmic Horizon and Beyond, 2012, etc.) explores the fragile nature of scientific collaborationespecially when two substantial egos are involved, compounded by one of them being subject to spells of braggadocio and overreachingand throws light upon the sometimes-murky worlds of determinism and probabilism. The author is generally clear when dealing with the unified theory and the quest to bring together the fundamental forces of nature, but physics in general is a gnarly topic to make clean and simple for the outsider: "Therefore, the cat would be in a zombielike quantum superposition of deceased and living," is difficult enough to grasp, let alone "the square root of the negative of the determinant of the Ricci tensor." But give Halpern serious credit for melding the wealth of math and physics that influenced both Einstein and Schrdinger's work into a coherent wholesymmetry rules, cosmological constants, non-Euclidean geometry. In addition, the author imbues the story with issues that touched the personal lives of both men. Einstein's life feels familiar and true; Schrdinger emerges as someone scarred by envy and not a little opportunistice.g., when he composed a "statement of support for the Anschluss." Halpern ably explores the clashing personalities and worldviews that had physics in churning ferment during the early part of the 20th century. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
