The Quantum Story: A history in 40 moments

by Jim Baggott

Overview

The twentieth century was defined by physics. From the minds of the world's leading physicists there flowed a river of ideas that would transport mankind to the pinnacle of wonderment and to the very depths of human despair. This was a century that began with the certainties of absolute knowledge and ended with the knowledge of absolute uncertainty. It was a century in which physicists developed weapons with the capacity to destroy our reality, whilst at the same time denying us the possibility that we can ever properly comprehend it.

Almost everything we think we know about the nature of our world comes from one theory of physics. This theory was discovered and refined in the first thirty years of the twentieth century and went on to become quite simply the most successful theory of physics ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the twenty-first century technology that we have learned to take for granted. But its success has come at a price, for it has at the same time completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at the level of its most fundamental constituents.

Rejecting the fundamental elements of uncertainty and chance implied by quantum theory, Albert Einstein once famously declared that 'God does not play dice'. Niels Bohr claimed that anybody who is not shocked by the theory has not understood it. The charismatic American physicist Richard Feynman went further: he claimed that nobody understands it.

This is quantum theory, and this book tells its story.

Jim Baggott presents a celebration of this wonderful yet wholly disconcerting theory, with a history told in forty episodes — significant moments of truth or turning points in the theory's development. From its birth in the porcelain furnaces used to study black body radiation in 1900, to the promise of stimulating new quantum phenomena to be revealed by CERN's Large Hadron Collider over a hundred years later, this is the extraordinary story of the quantum world.

Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199566846
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	506
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Jim Baggott, Freelance science writer

Jim Baggott is a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to work with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation (OUP, 2015), Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the 'God Particle' (OUP, 2012), and A Beginner's Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005).

Table of Contents

Part I: Quantum in Action1. An Act of Desperation: Berlin 19002. Independent Energy Quanta: Bern 19053. Quantum Numbers and Quantum Jumps: Manchester 19134. Wave-particle Duality: Paris 19235. Strangely Beautiful Interior: Helgoland 19256. A Late Erotic Outburst: Swiss Alps 19257. The Self-rotating Electron: Leiden 1925Part II: Quantum Probability and Quantum Uncertainty8. Quantum Probability: Gottingen 19269. The Whole Idea of Quantum Jumps Necessarily Leads to Nonsense: Copenhagen 192610. Uncertainty Principle: Copenhagen 192711. The Copenhagen Interpretation: Copenhagen 192712. Complementarity: Lake Como 1927Part III: Quantum Interpretation13. Gedankenexperiment: Brussels 192714. An Absolute Wonder: Cambridge 192715. A Certain Unreasonableness: Brussels 193016. A Bolt from the Blue: Copenhagen 193517. The Paradox of Schrodinger's Cat: Oxford 1935Part IV: Quantum Fields18. Crisis: Shelter Island 194719. Quantum Electrodynamics: Oldstone 194920. Gauge Symmetry and Gauge Theories: Princeton 195421. Three Quarks for Muster Mark: Pasadena 196322. The Higgs Mechanism: Edinburgh 1965Part V: Quantum Particles23. Electro-weak Unification: Harvard 196724. Deep Inelastic Scattering: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 196725. Asymptotic Freedom and Quantum Chromodynamics: Harvard 197326. The November Revolution: Brookhaven and SLAC 197427. The W and Z Bosons: CERN 198328. Completing the Picture: Fermilab 1994Part VI: Quantum Reality29. Hidden Variables: Princeton 195130. Bell's Theorem: Geneva 196431. The Aspect Experiments: Paris 198232. Beating the Uncertainty Principle: Albuquerque 199133. Three-photon GHZ States: Vienna 200034. Reality, Whether Local or Not: Vienna 2007Part VII: Quantum Gravity35. That Damned Equation: Princeton 196736. The First Superstring Revolution: Aspen 198437. The Quantum Structure of Space: Santa Barbara 198638. No Consistency Without Contingency: Durham 199539. The Second Superstring Revolution: Los Angeles 199540. Resolving the Impasse: CERN 2008EpilogueQuantum TimelineName IndexSubject Index

Editorial Reviews

"The reality of scientific endeavour is profoundly messy, often illogical, deeply emotional, and driven by the individual personalities involved...," writes Baggott, and his wonderful history of the scientists and ideas behind quantum mechanics offers ample entertaining proof. Science writer Baggott (A Beginner's Guide to Reality) tells the tumultuous story through 40 key events, beginning at the start of the 20th century, when Lord Kelvin, a British physicist, announced that scientists now knew everything about how the world worked. That triumphalism soon disappeared with Einstein's groundbreaking papers on relativity, which upended that understanding and defined the battleground that would occupy physics for the next century. Baggott hits all the usual high points, from Niels Bohr's work on atomic structure to the "uneasy alliances" and outright battles between proponents of different theories. Baggott's narrative stands out for its parallel exploration of the tenacious, all-too-human side of things: Schrödinger's unorthodox sex life and his loathing of academia; Richard Feynman's intuitive problem solving with all its "enthusiastic handwaving." The basic history behind the quantum revolution is well-known, but no one has ever told it in quite such a compellingly human and thematically seamless way. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A shimmering tour d'horizon of quantum theory from popular-science writer Baggott (Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939–49,2009, etc.).

Quantum theory—challenging, disconcerting and heavy on math—is not going to be pinned down and dissected for lay readers without a lot of kicking and screaming. Baggott succeeds, however, imbuing the narrative with important context, his own communicable enthusiasm and the instances of dense theoretical exposition mediated by historical and biographical storytelling. His survey runs roughly chronologically, starting with Max Planck's contention that energy is composed of a definite number of equal finite packages, through Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Feynman, Hawking et al. the author then looks at the Standard Model and the more amorphous superstring theory. Confirmed prediction is paramount in quantum theory because it works on educated guesses and implication, with only indirect evidence for the matter at hand. Here again Baggott shines, filling in the background, sometimes purely personal and sometimes entirely academic. Those with a jones for physics will not be disappointed, but the author leads readers through the dense material—if not like a seeing-eye dog, then with encouragement to look beyond his pages.

Quantum theory may deny us the possibility of properly comprehending physical reality, but Baggott's account is smart and consoling.

Kirkus Reviews

"A wonderful history of the scientists and ideas behind quantum mechanics.... The basic history behind the quantum revolution is well-known, but no one has ever told it in such a compellingly human and thematically seamless way."
--Publishers Weekly

"I have never come across a book quite like Jim Baggott's 'The Quantum Story.' He has done something that I would have thought impossible in a popular book. He manages to present the full ambit of the theory, starting with the introduction of the quantum--the basic unit of energy--by the German physicist Max Planck in the beginning of the 20th century, and ending with the search for the Higgs particle at the collider at CERN in Geneva. In doing this Mr. Baggott navigates successfully between the Scylla of mathematical rigor and the Charybdis of popular nonsense."
--Jeremy Bernstein, The Wall Street Journal

"A delight to read. It is clear, accessible, engaging, informative, and thorough. It illuminates an important, revolutionary era of modern science and the varied personalities behind it."
--Peter Atkins

From the Publisher