Niels Bohr's Times,: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity

When Einstein's revolution opened a window to quantum physics, it was the Dane Niels Bohr (1885-1962) who went through it to decode the first atomic spectrum (and to win a Nobel Prize in 1922). Bohr's career as a physicist spanned the full development of quantum mechanics, which he approached with a kind of gemutlichkeit that we do not associate with theoretical genius. Pais, a former physics professor who first met his subject in 1946, is a diligent biographer who captures Bohr and his era with the intensity of a devoted protege. Bohr's broad career, touching many important developments and figures in his field (Heisenberg, Pauli, Rutherford among them), and overflowing into European post-WW II policy requires a biographer with deep resources such as Pais, who here preserves the social and scientific dimensions of a full epoch of physics in his depiction of Bohr's singular life. Illustrations. (Nov.)