Book description
In 1932, the so-called annus mirabilis of modern physics, a
group of scientists gathered in Copenhagen for a week-long conference
on the extraordinary new work that was taking place in laboratories
across the world; work that would ultimately lead to the development
of nuclear weapons and the ensuing international power struggles.
Segrè's erudite and impressive account explores this crucial moment
in history through the lives and careers of seven physicists sitting
in the front row of the Copenhagen meeting. Six of them were already
in the pantheon of genius while the seventh - Max Delbrück - was the
author of a skit performed at the conference that lightly parodied the
struggle between the old and new theories of physics and eerily
foreshadowed the events that were to unfold in the struggle between
peaceful uses of scientific discovery and destructive ones.
Gino Segrè is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University
of Pennsylvania. An internationally renowned expert in high-energy
elementary-particle theoretical physics and in astrophysics, Segrè has
received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, the John S. Guggenhein Foundation, the John D.
Rockefeller Foundation and the U. S. Department of Energy. He is the
author of over 100 papers in his field as well as a popular book
published in 2003,
Einstein's Refrigerator - Tales of the Hot and Cold
. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Bettina Hoerlin and their dog
Kaya.
