You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This invaluable collection of essays pays tribute to Dan Tsui, 1998 Nobel laureate in Physics. It paints a portrait of his outstanding personal attributes through the eyes of his friends and relatives. In addition, it provides a record of the environment which accompanied him in his search for knowledge. This book, capturing Dan Tsui's experience and joy of the search for knowledge, will inspire scholars of all ages.
What is genius? Define it. Now think of scientists who embody the concept of genius. Does the name John Bardeen spring to mind? Indeed, have you ever heard of him? Like so much in modern life, immediate name recognition often rests on a cult of personality. We know Einstein, for example, not just for his tremendous contributions to science, but also because he was a character, who loved to mug for the camera. And our continuing fascination with Richard Feynman is not exclusively based on his body of work; it is in large measure tied to his flamboyant nature and offbeat sense of humor. These men, and their outsize personalities, have come to erroneously symbolize the true nature of genius and...
How two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe—two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters—struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold W...
Biographic Memoirs Volume 81 contains the biographies of deceased members of the National Academy of Sciences and bibliographies of their published works. Each biographical essay was written by a member of the Academy familiar with the professional career of the deceased. For historical and bibliographical purposes, these volumes are worth returning to time and again.
``Electron-Electron Interactions in Disordered Systems'' deals with the interplay of disorder and the Coulomb interaction. Prominent experts give state-of-the-art reviews of the theoretical and experimental work in this field and make it clear that the interplay of the two effects is essential, especially in low-dimensional systems.
This book presents articles written by leading experts surveying several major subfields in Condensed Matter Physics and related sciences. The articles are based on invited talks presented at a recent conference honoring Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson of Princeton University, who coined the phrase "More is different" while formulating his contention that all fields of physics, indeed all of science, involve equally fundamental insights. The articles introduce and survey current research in areas that have been close to Anderson's interests. Together, they illustrate both the deep impact that Anderson has had in this multifaceted field during the past half century and the progress spawned ...
This Oxford Handbook provides an overview of many of the topics that currently engage philosophers of physics. It surveys new issues and the problems that have become a focus of attention in recent years. It also provides up-to-date discussions of the still very important problems that dominated the field in the past. In the late 20th Century, the philosophy of physics was largely focused on orthodox Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. The measurement problem, the question of the possibility of hidden variables, and the nature of quantum locality dominated the literature on the quantum mechanics, whereas questions about relationalism vs. substantivalism, and issues about underdeterminat...
"In a remarkable career spanning more than six decades, Philip W. Anderson has made many fundamental contributions to physics. As codified in his oft-quoted phrase "More is Different", Anderson has been the most forceful and persuasive proponent of the radical, but now ubiquitous, viewpoint of emergent phenomena: truly fundamental concepts that can and do emerge from studies of Nature at each layer of complexity or energy scale. Anderson's ideas have also extended deeply into other areas of physics, including the Anderson-Higgs mechanism and the dynamics of pulsars. PWA90: A Lifetime of Emergence is a volume of original scientific essays and personal reminiscences of Philip W Anderson by experts in the field, that were presented as part of "PWA90: Emergent Frontiers of Condensed Matter" meeting held at Princeton in December 2013 to highlight Anderson's contributions to physics"--
Distant galaxies, dark matter, black holes – elusive, incomprehensible and inhospitable – these are the building blocks of modern physics. But where do we fit in this picture? For centuries, we have separated mind from matter. While physicists have pursued a theory of ‘everything’ with single-minded purpose, the matter of the mind, of human consciousness, has been conveniently sidestepped and ignored – consigned to priests, philosophers and poets. With the ambition of Stephen Hawking, Carlo Rovelli and Brian Cox, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation sets out a bold new vision for theoretical physics, unrestricted by sleek equations and neat formulations. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with the latest in quantum mechanics, acclaimed writer Musser offers a new interpretation of human consciousness. From bizarre cognitive phenomena, like lucid dreaming and self-taught synaesthesia, to the latest technological developments in AI, Musser asks: what can physics teach us about what it means to be human?
According to British scholar Conor Cunningham, the debate today between religion and evolution has been hijacked by extremists: on one side stand fundamentalist believers who reject evolution outright; on the opposing side are fundamentalist atheists who claim that Darwin s theory rules out the possibility of God. Both sides are dead wrong, argues Cunningham, who is at once a Christian and a firm believer in the theory of evolution. In Darwin s Pious Idea Cunningham puts forth a trenchant, compelling case for both creation and evolution, drawing skillfully on an array of philosophical, theological, historical, and scientific sources to buttress his arguments.