Reviews; November 2008; Scientific American Magazine; by Michelle Press; 1 Page(s)

"Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science by Sheilla Jones. Oxford University Press, 2008 ($24.95)

In 1927 ten leading physicists met in Brussels to formalize the new science of quantum physics, establishing a set of rules for the microscopic world that was completely incompatible with the existing set for the macroscopic world¿and creating a paradox scientists are still trying to resolve. Sheilla Jones, a journalist with a degree in physics, captures the scientific and the human aspects of this meeting. The cast: Albert Einstein, celebrity and lone wolf; Niels Bohr, father figure getting left behind by the new mathematical physics; Paul Ehrenfest, passionate friend to both Einstein and Bohr; Max Born, anxious hypochondriac; Erwin Schrödinger, enthusiastic womanizer; Wolfgang Pauli, clown with a dark side; Louis de Broglie, French aristocrat; Werner Heisenberg, intensely ambitious young man; Paul Dirac, Englishman of few words; and Pascual Jordan, uninvited Aryan nationalist. ¿This was never a team effort,¿ Jones writes. ¿Sometimes, two or three would collaborate for a while, but mostly they were rivals who wanted their particular version of the new science to prevail.... A quantum revolution that stalled in a pressure cooker of tension, tragedy and betrayal.¿