Faust in Copenhagen:
A Struggle for
the Soul of Physics
A Struggle for
the Soul of Physics
By Gino Segrè
Illustrated. 310 pp.
Viking. $25.95.
“As though their knowledge of the quantum secrets came with the power of prophecy, some three dozen of Europe’s best physicists ended their 1932 meeting in Copenhagen with a parody of Goethe’s ‘Faust.’….
It was only in retrospect that the silliness became profound. The players were becoming possessors of ‘a truth with implicit powers of good and evil,’ Gino Segrè writes in ‘Faust in Copenhagen,’ his inventive new book about the era. And ‘the devil… was in the details.'” –George Johnson
Related material:
This week’s entries
on Pauli and Faust,
the entries of
June 3 through June 6,
and the five entries
ending on April 7, 2005,
with “In the Details“