Einstein
Bohr
Pauli
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
LA CITA FAVORITA
In lieu of televised evening entertainment, a pastime we abandoned many years ago, el sr J reads aloud to me in bed until either his voice fails or I start to snore. At present he is reading and I am listening to the Kindle edition of Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar.
Several of the physicists we hadn't heard of before, such as Wolfgang Pauli. These men (and they have all been men so far, most of them Germanic) were theorists who required time and space to think (about time and space), and they needed to be able to communicate/collaborate/debate/argue with each other, a process hindered by two intervening world wars. It was with Heisenbergian uncertainty that we undertook to read this book: it could be bohring boring and/or pitched to a physics-trained readership, but it's not. The formulae, however, are a little intimidating.
Our favorite quotation is attributed to Pauli. When asked why he didn't seem happy, he replied, "Happy? How can a person be happy when he's thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?" Indeed.
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What a great idea! We do both read in bed, but it would be nice to be read to - esp. when it's cold LOL. Interesting book - I'll add it to my never-ending wish list.
ReplyDeleteHi Katie. I forgot to mention that I usually knit or crochet while he reads. Otherwise I'd be snoring right away.
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