The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics

A perfect model of ""free enterprise'' at work is the competitive-cooperative pursuit of knowledge about nature's fundamental particles by our century's physicists. Columbia University science historian Crease and Technology Illustrated editor Mann here trace virtually the entire story of what is today known as particle physics from Einstein's 1905 theory suggesting matter was both particles and waves, while at the same time Rutherford made his first proposals about the nature of the atom, through Bohr, Dirac, Schrodingersp?/have no way to check, so leave it.gs and others who developed quantum theory and quantum mechanics. These authors describe the heated arguments, debates, conferences and world-wide exchanges that took physicists, especially in the 1970s, to the discoveries of quarks, mesons, gluons and other such breakthroughs. Today, decades after Einstein's failure, Unification theories tying together the four fundamental forcesthe fourth, gravity, remains elusive, howeverare formulated almost daily. This is a demanding book, and gripping in an epochal sense. (May 2)