Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Science & Technology — Physics

Gimbel (philosophy, Gettysburg College) has written a fascinating book on the life and work of Einstein, who was not only the best-known physicist of the 20th century but also a humanist and Universalist who transcended race, religion, and nationality.  Both Germany and Switzerland claimed him when he won the Nobel Prize, and though he renounced Judaism, Jewish people consider Einstein one of theirs.  Published in the "Jewish Lives" series, this book provides a birds-eye view of Einstein and relativity, recalling many anecdotes that are part of Einstein lore.  Gimbel does a fine job of presenting non-physicist readers with simplified accounts of complex scientific ideas that require some technical background.  That said, only physicists are likely to understand Gimbel's exposition of the superposition of the psi function or notice the error in calling the universal gas constant the "Rydberg constant" (p. 39).  This aside, the book is a delightful read for scientists and non-scientists alike and for Jews and non-Jews because Einstein was more than a great physicist: he was an enlightened thinker whose life exemplified how bigotry and nationalism can darken human culture and history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

In what will surely become a canonical work, Smith (history, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia) surveys the development of optics in the Western world from classical Greece through Johannes Kepler (d. 1630).  The author's long engagement with the history of optics affords him the broad perspective necessary to narrate an important shift in optics from theorizing about processes of vision and sight to the modern emphasis on the physics of light.  He adroitly builds from the reigning survey on optics, David Lindberg'sTheories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (CH, Nov.'76), and provides a new interpretation, arguing that Kepler's contributions led to a decisive break between premodern and modern optics.  Smith systematically guides readers through all major texts in the history of optics, at times in painstaking detail, making this book a valuable reference work.  At the same time, he never lets the big picture recede into the background for too long, consistently and clearly articulating the larger textual traditions and conceptual innovations in his sources and weaving them into a coherent, engaging story and historical argument.  Students and faculty alikein fact, anyone interested in the nature and development of premodern opticswill need to consult this book.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners.

This is an outstanding work about the social responsibility of scientists, exemplified by considering the actions of three Nobelist physicists during the Nazi regime in Germany: Max Planck, Peter Debye, and Werner Heisenberg.  These notable scientists were administrators of institutions during the toxic Third ReichPlanck of the Prussian Academy of Sciences; Debye of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics (KWIP) until his move to Cornell in 1941; and Heisenberg of Leipzig University and then, in 1942, KWIP, to pursue research toward the atomic bomb (enthusiastically, reluctantly, or disingenuously, depending on different accounts).  Ball, a journalist and prolific author, e.g.,Curiosity (CH, Oct'13, 51-0838), chronicles the pressures on these men to expel Jews from their posts before the war and to pursue war research and support the Nazi ideology during the war.  The retrospective furor about their alleged collaboration, accommodation, or resistance motivates Ball to reconstruct their dilemmas and responses.  The conflicting accounts of Heisenbergs role in the atomic bomb project are carefully reviewed and their ambiguity noted and discussed.  In these episodes, Ball thoughtfully navigates the nuances of attaching motives to acts, avoiding justifying the more strident contemporary accusations and exoneration.  This is a stunning cautionary tale, well researched and told.Summing Up: Essential. All academic, general, and professional library collections.

This compact volume contains a treasure trove of descriptions of key scientific work (particularly instrumentation) in the founding of the discipline of nanotechnology.  Marcovich and Shinn (both, historians and sociologists of science, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, France) have provided an accessible description of the remarkable new understanding of and technologies available at the single molecule level, as well as brief sketches of the work of important figures illustrating what the authors identify as unique, discipline-spanning intellectual work.  The authors' articulation of the epistemology and core descriptive framework used in nanotechnology research and engineering is particularly trenchant and convincing.  In contrast to what is often termed quantum weirdness, which defies concrete images and determinism at the atomic level, nanotechnology successfully utilizes three-dimensional images of single atoms and their direct observation and control.  While at times necessarily technical, the text is generally precise and does not overuse jargon.  This book is a very good starting point for anyone who wants to comprehend the recent explosion of work at the nano level, appreciate how a new area of science has emerged with its own unique methods and startling new understanding of the atomic world, or glimpse the possibilities of technologies for designing and controlling materials at the atomic level.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.