The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery of Twentieth-Century Physicists

Physicist Pais won an American Book Award for his 1983 Einstein bio, Subtle Is the Lord; here he offers short, memorable, avowedly subjective sketches of the lives, accomplishments and personalities of 16 men whose work drove modern physics. ""I have known all of them personally,"" Pais remarks; sometimes, delightfully, he brings his reminiscences to the fore. The very likable Niels Bohr--who helped discover the structure of the atom--kept up friendly professional quarrels with Einstein and struggled, often fruitlessly, to articulate his subtle thought to lay audiences. (Pais has also penned a full-length Bohr bio; Bohr, Copenhagen and Denmark's Bohr Institute provide a sort of center from which Pais draws anecdotes and recollections about several later figures, among them Res Jost and Oskar Klein.) Mitchell Feigenbaum, who helped unfold the mathematics of chaos, attributed his most important discoveries partly to his primitive programmable calculator. The calm and magisterial George Uhlenbeck wanted to be a historian--until he discovered that electrons have spin. Einstein himself turns up for a brief essay, as do game theorist John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli of exclusion principle fame and Eugene Wigner, who applied mathematical group theory to quantum mechanics. Pais assumes his readers know at least some of the relevant physics--the volume shouldn't attract, and doesn't seek, an audience of novices. Instead, Pais assembles admiring, enjoyable tales about physicists, just as many previous writers have compiled tales about painters and composers, for aficionados, professionals and students of the discipline. (June)