The Age of Entanglement Louisa Gilder Review
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The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn (Hardcover)
by Louisa Gilder (Author)
Textbook Details
* Paperback: 464 pages
* Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (November 11, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1400044170
* ISBN-13: 978-1400044177
* Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
* Rating: 
Textbook Description
A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles—one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.
In 1935, in what would become the most cited of all of his papers, Albert Einstein showed that quantum mechanics predicted such a correlation, which he dubbed “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this spooky correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence wasn’t firmly established until 1964, in a groundbreaking paper by the Irish physicist John Bell. What happened during those years and what has happened since to refine the understanding of this phenomenon is the fascinating story told here.
We move from a coffee shop in Zurich, where Einstein and Max von Laue discuss the madness of quantum theory, to a bar in Brazil, as David Bohm and Richard Feynman chat over cervejas. We travel to the campuses of American universities—from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Berkeley to the Princeton of Einstein and Bohm to Bell’s Stanford sabbatical—and we visit centers of European physics: Copenhagen, home to Bohr’s famous institute, and Munich, where Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli picnic on cheese and heady discussions of electron orbits.
Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Louisa Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing their own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. Here are Bohr and Einstein clashing, and Heisenberg and Pauli deciding which mysteries to pursue. We see Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie pave the way for Bell, whose work is here given a long-overdue revisiting. And with his characteristic matter-of-fact eloquence, Richard Feynman challenges his contemporaries to make something of this entanglement.
The Age of Entanglement Review
I thoughly enjoyed reading the carefully referenced “dialogs/conversations” Miss Gilder weaved together to create a novel like experience. I hope that people are not turned off by the “quantum physics” in the title. Miss Gilder does a wonderful job of following the ideas of quantum physics from it’s beginnings with it’s many false starts, to current understanding (or puzzled understanding- can this really be?)
I felt as though I was a fly on the wall, as the well-known, and not so well known, scientists had discussions, reasoned out ideas, lost some, regained others, and puzzled thier way though the seemingly impossible complex possiblities. She caught “science” as it realy happens. False leads, promising ideas that could not be tested, experiments with unexpected results, and personality conflicts between scientists. All the human elements that are lost in many nonfiction accounts of modern science. People tend to think of “science” as being a series of linear discoveries, when in reality the “connect the dots” is sometimes quite random, and connections come from unexpectted places/people.
Kudos to Louisa Gilder for tackling an important topic in such a creative and wonderful manner. The author has done what very few seem capable of doing – making quantum physics understandable and enjoyable for the non-scientist and layperson. There are quite a few books that attempt to tackle the subject of entanglement, but Gilder’s book stands above the pack. It’s a tour de force. She does a terrific job of presenting the dynamics of scientific discovery with extraordinary flair. It is as if the reader is a fly on the wall during the many important discoveries and debates that have fueled the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Many of the great minds that have contributed to the advance of quantum physics over the past century come to life in Gilder’s book. We see the humanness that exists along side the genius. There is a wonderful complexity to scientific discovery that is not well appreciated by the masses. Gilder’s book illuminates that complexity in splendid fashion. This book is a treasure. I congratulate the author on her fine accomplishment, and enthusiastically encourage readers to purchase a copy of The Age of Entanglement. It’s the kind of book that is difficult to put down and you don’t want to end. Five stars for the book and one more star for the incredible effort that it took to produce it.
My first post on a book (I don’t know and am unrelated to the author)… This is an attempt to do something quite remarkable– the reconstruction from reputable primary and secondary sources of could-well-have-happened-this-way conversations among renowned physicists during a fascinating and astonishing period of scientific discovery. But what I found uncommon, and perhaps unique, is Ms. Guilder’s amazing coupling of lucid scientific explanations with a literary flair that is quite poetic. The post-WWII part of the book is more fragmented and less novelistic, perhaps due to the historical material (and the fact that Guilder was 6-8 years into the project), but if you are a scientific romantic interested in immersing yourself in the socially messy, ‘entangled’ world of brilliant people uncovering mind-boggling physicial truths, this is your book. Though stretched thin toward the end, five stars for the brilliant language, startling material and amazingly ambitious and satisfying approach to a fascinating topic. I borrowed, and now will buy.
Paperback & Kindle Edition
The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn (Vintage) (Paperback)
The Age of Entanglement (Kindle Edition)
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