Too Big for a Single Mind: How the Greatest Generation of Physicists Uncovered the Quantum World (Paperback)

Description

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Now in paperback: The thrilling history of the brilliant minds behind the most revolutionary ideas in physics—quantum theory, relativity, and more!
 
The world may never see another era of science like the first half of the twentieth century, when a peerless cast of physicists—Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and others—came together to uncover the quantum world, a concept so outrageous and contrary to traditional physics that its own founders rebelled against it until the equations held up and fundamentally changed our understanding of reality. Tobias Hürter takes us back to a harrowing time when war upended the lives of these renegade scientists who were forced to crisscross Europe as they worked together to topple classical physics.

Too Big for a Single Mind resurrects old letters, notes, research, diaries, and memoirs, recasting these trailblazers as friends and rivals, lovers and loners, intellectuals and dreamers. Readers will witness the birth of ideas that not only revolutionized physics and our world but attest to the boundless potential of genius in collaboration.

About the Author

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Tobias Hürter studied mathematics and philosophy in Munich and Berkeley. He has written about science and philosophy for magazines and newspapers since 2000, including as an editor at MIT Technology Review and as cofounder of the philosophy magazine Hohe Luft. Now a permanent freelance editor at Die Zeit Magazin Wissen, he lives in Munich.

Praise For…

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2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist

“Intriguing and well-written. . . . Too Big for a Single Mind cleverly interweaves the stories of the leading early 20th-century physicists with the political and personal events that shaped their lives. . . . Hürter’s formidable grasp of the great period of quantum discovery represents a new, exciting approach to the literature about this momentous era.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Hürter guides us through the time when physicists developed their fundamental theories.”—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Too Big for a Single Mind by Tobias Hürter highlights the work of Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others did together to shake up physics and introduce quantum mechanics, arguing that the field’s discovery was a collaborative effort.”—Publishers Weekly