Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos: Writings on Science

Bernstein, who is a professor of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology but who is more widely known for his scientific profiles of great scientists in The New Yorker , presents some of his best pieces of the past decade, including two never-before published and several published in lesser-known journals. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

This is the third collection from physicist Bernstein, whose New Yorker column, "The Annals of Science," begun in the 1960s, popularized literary profiles of scientists. His first collection, Experiencing Science , published in 1978, contains what are arguably his best pieces, but the 13 profiles and meditations here, drawn from the last five years, offer certain late-career pleasures. The "cranks" of the title refers to Bernstein's personal test for distinguishing the insight of genius from the demands of eccentricity, elucidated in "How Can We Be Sure That Albert Einstein Was Not a Crank?" Among pieces on Alan Turing, Primo Levi and James Watson, "Feet of Clay," the profile of Erwin Schrodinger, creator of wave mechanics, demonstrates the Bernstein approach at its best: an arcane theory and a diffident man caught in difficult times--all drawn with lucidity, humanity and discreet intelligence.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Always articulate and interesting, Bernstein ranks among the very best of popular science essayists. This anthology of 16 of his finest recent essays is a true collection --i.e., instead of a smattering of unrelated writings, haphazardly assembled, this book explores several related themes and, by doing so, reveals fundamental linkages between the lives and works of several key 20th-century scientists. Among them, readers meet, in very personal ways, Albert Eintein, Niels Bohr, Alan Turing, Erwin Schrodinger, and Stephen Hawking. They also meet some significant but lesser-known figures, like Edwin Land, Tom Lehrer, Sophia Kovalevsky, and, in an extremely moving work, the Italian chemist Primo Levi, who was a prisoner at Auschwitz. While most of the essays have been previously published, one of the new works, the concluding essay entitled "Science Education for Non-Scientists," is an important addition in that it convincingly outlines why science literacy is important. Recommended for popular science collections.
- Gregg Sapp, Montana State Univ. Libs., Bozeman
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.