cover image Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century

Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century

Helge Kragh. Princeton University Press, $75 (512pp) ISBN 978-0-691-01206-3

How did modern physics get from Rutherford and radioactivity to Heisenberg, Hiroshima and Stephen Hawking? Whose discoveries led to what theories, and why? How were physics and physicists affected by the micro- and macro-politics--from institutional rivalries to totalitarian movements--so visible throughout our century? Kragh (Dirac; Cosmology and Controversy), a historian of science at Aarhus University in Denmark, offers a hefty account of experiments and theories, experimental scientists and theoreticians, from the 1890s (marked by the rise of ""electrodynamic models"" as against mechanical ones) to the 1990s, when Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) promised to explain a forest of charmingly named elementary particles. In between, he covers debates about atomic structure; ""the slow rise of quantum theory""; cryogenics; Einsteinian relativity (and its misinterpretations); the political, military and economic roles of physicists in and between the world wars; the Bomb; the meson, the boson, et al.; the Big Bang; superconductivity; and the perpetually frustrating dances between scientists and the organizations that fund them. Unable to cover all the physics there is, Kragh focuses on the best-known and most influential parts: on nuclear and subatomic physics, on relativity and cosmology and on European and American scientists. He concludes that, despite the surprises of quantum mechanics, 20th-century ""physics... [has] resulted in new and much-improved theories, but that these have been produced largely cumulatively and without a complete break with the past."" Neither a specialized academic work nor a mere popularization, Kragh's tome exhibits the kind of synthetic, deeply detailed and carefully explained survey more common in military or art history than in the history of science. It's an impressive reference work, and a serious, rewarding read. 22 b&w illus., 34 tables. (Nov.)