book-reviews – David S. Moore: Insights & Innovations

I just finished reading William Cropper’s book Great Physicists, published in 2001 by Oxford University Press. It’s a wonderful book of the life stories of 30 of the leading figures in the field of physics, from Galileo to Stephen Hawking.

I was aware, at least marginally, of most of the people in the book, but I also encountered several surprises. My first surprise was to learn about Sadi Carnot who can, in some respects, be considered the founder of modern thermodynamics. I had never heard of him. But Cropper’s thoughtful discussion of Carnot’s ideas about devices that employ heat to produce power (like the steam engine) convinced me that his work was, indeed, original and important.

I was vaguely familiar with the name of Lise Meitner, but I was truly surprised to learn of the tremendous struggles she endured. She had the misfortune to be both female and Jewish– two disadvantages that did not serve her well during the rise of Nazism. She and her nephew Otto Frisch discovered the process by which a uranium atom could be split in two by a neutron. It was an absolutely stunning idea– one that certainly deserved a Nobel prize– but although her friend and collaborator Otto Hahn won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission, neither Lise nor her nephew were recognized. She had great difficulty escaping from Nazi Germany during the war, and she met with many barriers to recognition and success after.

I was surprised by the stuffiness of Edwin Hubble who, in later life, exaggerated his wartime bravado (during WWI), his career as a lawyer, and his achievements as an athlete. Apparently he did that to conceal his middle class background from his wife’s wealthy relatives.

I was stunned to learn of the hostility that Sir Arthur Eddington expressed toward Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s deduction that stars larger than about 1.4 time the mass of the Sun cannot collapse into a white dwarf. That rule is now known as the Chandrasekhar Limit, and it has long since been accepted as a fundamental fact about stellar evolution.

I was surprised that Johannes Kepler was not included in the book. In my view, Kepler was a genius of the first rank. But I suppose you can’t write a book about everyone of importance in the history of science.

And I was puzzled and saddened to read that Ludwig Boltzmann committed suicide while he, his wife, and his daughter were traveling near Trieste. He was clearly on the forefront of thermodynamics research at the time, and he was loved as an instructor. But apparently he was also prone to severe bouts of depression.

So many of these stories are full of vitality– and a sense of wonder. That, I suppose, is the main lesson of this book. All of the subjects appear enraptured by their love of the subject. From the indomitable Marie Curie (the only person to win two Nobel prizes in two different subjects), to the casual Albert Einstein to the reclusive Paul Dirac– all of these people exhibit first and foremost a love of the quest, the search for the secrets of nature. That sense of wonder is what I think is most the most enduring lesson of this book. A very good read indeed.

This book, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes by Stephen Jay Gould, has been sitting unread on my bookshelf for a couple of decades. I finally decided to get around to reading it. I had read an article he wrote many years ago (in Daedalus, I think) and admired it greatly. So I was prepared to be impressed. It was published in 1983.

Mr. Gould taught paleontology and biology at Harvard University. He was also a tremendous writer, and a scholar of the history of biology, geology, and paleontology. This book is a collection of essays he wrote over the course of many years. The topics covered traverse a wide range of issues from his several realms of expertise. Subjects include the parental care habits of boobies, the dazzling originality of Nicolaus Steno’s landmark work Prodromus to a dissertation on a solid body naturally contained within a solid, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, the “Monkey” trial, the Piltdown conspiracy, the proper classification of Zebras, and the teeth of hens and the toes of horses.

These essays are masterfully written, impeccably documented, and wonderfully diverse. The one element they have in common is the theory of evolution– its principles, its evidence, its elegance, and its many critics. It’s impossible, really, to summarize this book. The subject matter is too broad and the evidence and arguments are too subtle to characterize in a brief overview.

But what emerges unquestionably from these essays is Mr. Gould’s love and mastery of his studies. He was unquestionably a scholar in the highest sense– one who was driven by boundless curiosity and who loved nothing more than learning. These essays are true models of the very best in expository writing on difficult scientific matters. I would encourage anyone to read them.

Tag: book-reviews

Book review: Great Physicists

Book review: Hen’s Teeth & Horse’s toes