Jones, Sheilla. The quantum ten: A story of passion, tragedy, ambition and science. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2008. 323pp.

Enough with the physics books, already! After a summer of more or less nothing but physics books, I should have probably tried something a bit different. On the other hand, this book is about one of the most interesting periods in all the history of physics -- that transitional time in the first third of the 20th century when some of the greatest minds of all time worked out the foundations of quantum physics. Back when I read Isaacson's Einstein book, that was one of the periods that fascinated me the most, especially because it was so instructive to see a brilliant mind like Einstein be so doggedly wrong. In a way, it gives hope to us all.

But, back to the book at hand.

Canadian journalist Sheilla Jones is basically telling the story of the rise of quantum theory through the stories of ten men: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrodinger, Louis de Broglie, Pascual Jordan and Paul Ehrenfest. It is through their interactions up until the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927 that the story is told.

Jones does an admirable job of telling those 10 interrelated stories in a clear and comprehensible way. Some are highlighted more, such as Einstein, Bohr or Born and some less, such as Jordan or Dirac. However, if one person can said to be the main lens through which Jones tells the story, it is the tragic, troubled Paul Ehrenfest, the confidant of Einstein who ultimately committed suicide while also taking the life of his disabled son. His doubts and insecurities concerning his own abilities as a physicist are a perfect mirror in many ways for the perceived doubts and insecurities of the new quantum reality that those men had to come to grips with.

Jones does a fine job of telling a scientific story through biographical details, weaving in the darkening tale of pre-Nazi-era Europe in the tale as well. If I have any complaint, it's that the actually recounting of the Solvay Conference was a bit of an anti-climax. This is easily one of the best science books of the year and I would certainly expect it to make many of the year's best lists, especially in Canada.

I would easily recommend this book to any academic library that collects in popular science or the history of science. It would also be suitable for any public library. With the holiday season upon us, there would be worse gift ideas for the historically or scientifically minded.

Summer physics reading

I seem to have finished a bunch of popular physics / history of physics-type books in the last few months, so I thought I'd do a combined review of all of them. Especially since I really don't have too much to say about most of the individual titles. Except for the Pickover, I'd say that they're all slam-dunk acquisitions for any academic library that collects at all in popular or historical physics material.


Smoot, George and Keay Davidson. Wrinkles in time: Witness to the birth of the universe. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. 331pp.

George Smoot won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 with John Mather "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation." This book, originally published in 1994 and now republished to take advantage of Smoot's notoriety, tells the story of he and his teams efforts to discover that cosmic background radiation.

A very engaging book overall, it starts with a fairly extensive history of cosmology that covers several chapters. This is probably the weakest part of the book and it's a shame that many may have given up on the book during these fairly dry chapters. What's really engaging about the book and what makes it really worth reading is Smoot's story about the trials and tribulations of the various experiments his team devised and implemented. These included using spy planes and high altitude balloons and culminated in a trip to the Antarctic for one final experiment. All of those are great stories -- I thought the sections in Antarctica to be the best in the book and among the best descriptions of working science that I've ever read. They really should have been more foregrounded in the book. Overall, a great book.


Batterson, Steve. Pursuit of genius: Flexner, Einstein and the early faculty at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Wellesley: AK Peters, 2006. 301pp.

Another really fine book with a historical theme, this one strongly related to physics as well as math and other fields. This is a history of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, the place where Einstein worked when he moved to the US. In mostly concentrates on the early years of the institute until the 1960s then does a quick summer of more recent decades.

The early chapters are the story of Abraham Flexner, the founder of the Institute, and his inspirations and early efforts to get funding and get his dream up and running. This is easily the best part of the book, engaging and fascinating. It also functions as an intellectual history of the US in the early part of the 20th century. It also touches on the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the first few scholars to commit to the Institute.

Later chapters are devoted to the political wranglings of running an institute filled with scientific prima donnas as well as securing funding from governments and donors. These bits are considerably less compelling.

Overall, though, this is a fine book, one that I enjoyed quite a bit.


Pickover, Clifford A. Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of science and the great minds behind them. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 514pp.

Did this book make me smarter? Did I retain any of the massive amount of physics and chemistry I read about?

First of all, the idea behind Clifford Pickover's new book is to take a bunch of "laws of science & nature" that have been named after their most well known proponent (not necessarily the person who discovered the law) and explain them in a way suitable for a popular audience. Along with the explanation he also provides quite a bit of historical and biographical background on the law. The explanations are, on the whole, a little too detailed and technical for my liking however I'm probably not the ideal audience. Some of the bio & historical detail is pretty good, and some is pretty dry. However, I did read the book cover-to-cover and it is probably better to dip into rather than attempt comprehensiveness. One thing I would like to mention is that each law's section has a good bibliography of sources; my only complaint is that Pickover seemed to mostly consult books from his undergrad days -- ie. the reading lists tended on the older side. Another nice thing is that each section had two series of quotes, one directly about the law in question and the other with more general, and more provocative, quotes of a philosophical nature about what science and laws of science really are.

Which leads me to my biggest complaint, and the point which causes me to hesitate to recommend this book to libraries. The religious agenda. So much of the book seems to really be about reconciling the scientific viewpoint with religious and "spiritual" feelings. Nothing is more consistently highlighted in the biographical sections than how religious that particular scientist was. Now I have nothing is particular against attempts to reconcile science and religion (as pointless as think those attempts may be), but to have such an agenda, so clearly and consistently explicated in the text, without making it very clear in the title and descriptions of the book seems to me to be a bit dishonest. For that, I'm not sure if the publishers or Pickover are more at fault but I can only judge by the book that I have in my hands. Buyer beware.

Before I forget: did this book make me smarter? Well, maybe a little. Certainly, I have very little recollection of many of the details of the various laws. On the other hand, I do have much more of a sense and appreciation for the breadth and variety of those laws.



Luminet, Jean-Pierre. The wraparound universe. Wellesley: AK Peters, 2008. 313pp.

Did this book make me smarter? I think so, maybe a little. I've been reading so many popular physics books lately, that some of it might be sinking in.

This one is a bit different from the others in that it tries to make a case for the author's theories on the shape of the universe. The first part of the book is a detailed explication of Luminet's theories with the second part mostly being the background and supplementary information that goes with the first part. The epilogue is basically Luminet's story of how he got his somewhat controversial ideas published.

Not being a physicist, I leave it to you to explore the content of Luminet's ideas. The book is often quite advanced, perhaps a little beyond my cosmology comfort zone. That said, I think I got 50-75% of the book, which isn't bad. You do need to exercise a little attention and concentration and especially to take it in small doses. This book really stretches notions of "popular" science.

In any case, Luminet's lively prose and relaxed style survive Erik Novak's fine translation. I would heartily recommend this to academic libraries but public and school libraries might find it too advanced for most of thier patrons. Go with the Smoot book instead, it's really the best and most entertaining of the bunch as well as being the most appropriate for a mass audience

(The Batterson, Luminet and Pickover books were all provided by the publisher. The Smoot book was a Father's Day gift from my sons.)

Getting on board for SCOAP3

What is SCOAP3, you ask? One of the most interesting Open Access projects out there these days and perhaps one pathway into the future of scholarly publishing.

To quote myself:

And look at what's happening in the High Energy Physics field with the SCOAP3 project! Imagine a world where libraries could band together to pay publishers to make their journals all Open Access. It's almost a utopian dream.

Ah yes, a utopian dream. So, here's the story in a nutshell: The HEP field is fairly small, with only a handful of core journals (at both commercial and society publishers) and another handful of journals that publish some HEP content. There's already a great tradition of open access using, for example, the arXiv repository. But, the journals in the field and still valued for their peer review/gatekeeping function. But how to get all the peer reviewed content freely available to everyone?

The SCOAP3 idea is for all the libraries and institutions that subscribe to the journals to band together and form their own consortium. That way, all the money can be collected and negotiations can be started with publishers for the best price. Aha! Here's the trick. Instead of all those subscribers paying their money for exclusive access to the publisher's content, they would use that money to pay for open access for everyone to the content. Basically, all the same funders pay more-or-less the same money to the same publishers but instead of for their own good, it's for the common good.

Now, there's a lot more to the details of this and the best source is the SCOAP3 website itself.

• About
  
• News
  
• What they say about SCOAP3

Some more info from other sources:

• Audacity of SCOAP3 by Ivy Anderson (ARL Bimonthly Report)
  
• Report of the SCOAP3 Working Party
  
• Slides and Videos from the U.S. Focal meeting, February 29th, 2008 (I'm linking to the YouTube videos. Higher quality available at the link)
  
  
  
  • Welcome & Opening Address
    
  • What is Open Access, anyhow (Rick Luce, Emory University)
    
  • The SCOAP3 model (Salvatore Mele, CERN)
    
  • Fund-raising in Europe (Jens Vigen, CERN)
    
  • SCOAP3: Expectations of a large research institution (Ralf Schimmer, Max Planck Digital Library)
    
  • US consortia in SCOAP3 (Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library)
    
  • Individual US libraries and SCOAP3 - I (Miriam Blake, Los Alamos National Laboratory)
    
  • Individual US libraries and SCOAP3 - II (Kimberly Douglas, Caltech)
    
  • OA synergies: Repositories for High-Energy Physics (Travis Brooks, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center)

CERN is one the driving forces behind SCOAP3 and in general they've had really good success in Europe. They're also beginning to make real headway among US libraries. Check out who's involved.

For whatever reason, Canada isn't on board yet. I don't know why. If you're reading this and you're a Canadian science (esp. physics) librarian, bring it up to your administration or to your consortium. Talk about it, explain why it's so important to look to the future of scholarly publishing, to look beyond locking us in to the whims of the commercial publishers. At the Open Access session hosted here at York this past Wednesday, one of the speakers bought up SCOAP3 and wondered aloud why Canada wasn't involved. I wished I had an answer for him.

Two more books I'd like to read

First of all, Clifford Pickover emailed me about his most recent book and it looks pretty cool:

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

Throughout this fascinating book, Clifford Pickover invites us to share in the amazing adventures of brilliant, quirky, and passionate people after whom these laws are named. These lawgivers turn out to be a fascinating, diverse, and sometimes eccentric group of people. Many were extremely versatile polymaths--human dynamos with a seemingly infinite supply of curiosity and energy and who worked in many different areas in science. Others had non-conventional educations and displayed their unusual talents from an early age. Some experienced resistance to their ideas, causing significant personal anguish.

Pickover examines more than 40 great laws, providing brief and cogent introductions to the science behind the laws as well as engaging biographies of such scientists as Newton, Faraday, Ohm, Curie, and Planck. Throughout, he includes fascinating, little-known tidbits relating to the law or lawgiver, and he provides cross-references to other laws or equations mentioned in the book. For several entries, he includes simple numerical examples and solved problems so that readers can have a hands-on understanding of the application of the law.

Next up is one of the big buzz books from the last month or so, this one by Jonathan Zittrain:

The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.

The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”

Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His life and universe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 674pp.

Walter Issacson's 2007 biography of Albert Einstein was one of the best reviewed books of that year, appearing on nearly all the year end lists of favourite science books. Humane, magisterial, accessible, comprehensive, engrossing, all words used to describe this book. And each of them is very well deserved. So, as you can imagine, I was delighted when I found the book under the christmas tree this past December. I started reading it almost immediately, amid the genial chaos of my sister's Ottawa home during the holiday, reading it slowly but surely over the next couple of months. This is a perfect book to read and savour over a leisurely read. As with most biographies, you know how it ends. As well, Isaacson goes into quite a bit of detail, so parts of it can be a bit slow.

Oddly, this happens to be the first real Einstein biography I've ever read. I've had the Clark biography knocking around the house for years but have never actually started it. Reading Isaacson's book also felt somewhat like a gap in my knowledge and reading history had been closed. It's a nice feeling.

Like I said, this book is a lot of things.

Engrossing. Now I mentioned a bit slow. That's true, a detailed biography can sometimes drag a bit and this was no different. However, for the most part I found the story quite fast paced, especially the section when Einstein's fame started to grow right through the start of WWII. As well, I found the last section, Einstein's final years in Princeton, hard to put down.

Comprehensive. Isaacson covers Einstein's youth, his important years as a Swiss patent examiner, a lot of detail about his miracle year of 1905, his struggles to land a secure academic job, his marital woes, his political views, his life in Berlin up until the Nazis took over, the war years as well as his post war life in Princeton.

Accessible. Isaacson hits the right balance when it comes to actually explaining Einstein's scientific ideas and the overall context of the scientific times. Since Einstein himself relied on very visual thought experiments to frame his theories, Isaacson takes advantage of those thought experiments to explain the theories to us.

Humane. This is a warts and all portrait of Einstein. His infidelity, absent mindedness, emotionally distant relationships with his familty, stubbornness, scientific mistakes, his resistance to quantum theory, all are covered. Granted, in many ways these failings are presented as quirky rather than damning, but we do get a pretty fair presentation of the human side of Einstein.

Magisterial. Human side, yes. But this is clearly in the "Great Man" tradition of scientific biography. We really finish the book feeling we know Einstein the genius. While still covering the all-too-human nature of Einstein, Isaacson still treats Einstein with kid gloves, glossing over some pretty significant controversies. Overall, it's a very gentle, respectful and even sentimental account of Einstein's life.

Borrow this book, buy it for yourself, get someone to buy it for you, buy it for your library's collection, recommend it for your local library's collection, but read it. It's a great book, a great introduction to the life of one the most interesting and important people of the last 100 or so years. It's rare to read a great big biography of a person and want to read more. This isn't the last Einstein book I'll read. It's only the first. I would heartily recommend it to any library that collects any scientific or general biography. It might be a bit weighty for high school libraries, but any level beyond that would be fine.

Labreporter.com: Films to take you to the heart of science

Thanks to Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool for alerting me to a great project she and science communicator Alom Shaha are spearheading.

It's Labreporter:

Every day, thousands of people around the world get up and go to work in a science lab somewhere. Some make major discoveries leading to huge technological advances while others quietly add to humanity’s knowledge of the world and how it works. Labreporter.com provides a unique glimpse into laboratories from around the world, revealing the people who work in them, what they do, how they do it and, most importantly, why they do it.

What up so far are six videos on particle physics, in particular about the LHC. All are hosted in YouTube and can be viewed here on the Labreporter site.

I've watched a couple of the videos so far and can say that they're great. The videos, brief descriptions and related links are here:

• Big Bang V2.0
  
• Sizing things up
  
• The Mystery of the Missing Mass
  
• Hunting for Higgs
  
• The matter with Anti-matter
  
• B is for Beauty

IEEE Library Advisory Council Meeting, October 24-26, 2007

Well, I'm back from New York City. It was a very stimulating and productive meeting, a great opportunity to meet colleagues from both the IEEE and other libraries and institutions. Rarely do we get an opportunity to discuss and share with librarians from corporate, government and institutional settings. Often, our interests are the same but often they are markedly different. Where issues like Open Access are obvious to us they can be complex in other environments; something that we can understand intellectually but need to be face to face to really understand.

We had two keynotes, one from Tony Breitzman of 1790 Analytics on the value that using scholarly literature can add to technology development and how that is visible in patent citations. The second keynote was by Richard Sweeney of the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Millennial Behaviors and Higher Education. In other words, how kids today really are different from previous generations. A bracing overview with lots to think about.

Other presentations (mostly by us librarians), included: Resource Access and Delivery Best Practices; Open Access in Europe and the HEP communities; IEEE Xplore developments and Rights Management in a Corporate Environment.

Mike Buschman of the IEEE and I presented on Nature as an Example of Web 2.0. More details on that in my next post.

All this to say, it was great and I'm really looking forward to next year. I want to thank the IEEE for extending me this opportunity and to the staff (especially Phyllis!) for being so warm and welcoming.

I did get a chance to go to the Strand for a few purchases as well as see a Broadway show (Jersey Boys). The Rockefeller Center observatory was breathtaking.

Smolin, Lee. The trouble with physics: The rise of string theory, the of a science, and what comes next. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 392

This one of those very rare books, books that make you truly smarter and more knowledgeable that when you started. What does Lee Smolin, physicist at Waterloo's Perimeter Institute, make us smarter and more knowledgeable about, you ask? First of all, the history of theoretical particle physics and the search for a theory that unifies classical physics and quantum theory. Second, the progress of String Theory as a unifying theory and it's alternatives. Third, the culture of the physics community and how it influences the first two.

It's also one of those books that just stops you in your tracks every once in a while. An insight or a story provoking intense reflection and concentration. I'd be sitting there, reading, and suddenly, staring off into space. It makes for a slow but worthwhile reading experience. Since the book treats a lot of fairly advanced topics in theoretical physics, it's also a pretty mind expanding experience, requiring a fair bit of comprehension to soak it all in. Any previous knowledge of string theory of other physics concepts will only enhance the enjoyment (and comprehension) of this book. My general physics knowledge is probably above average and there were a couple of parts where I struggled a bit. There were times when things seemed to make perfect sense while I was reading; then, after putting the book down for a bit, all comprehension simply vanished. On the other hand, as will become apparent later in the review, the hard-core physics stuff isn't really the main payoff of the book so if you find yourself skimming some of the particularly hairy parts in order to keep up your momentum, that's OK.

The main topic of the book has to do with the lack of really productive research in physics since the mid-1970s, when the Standard Model was set out. Since that time, the main focus of theoretical physics has been String Theory. However, as advanced as the theory is, there has been no experimental proof that it is valid. In this sense, compared to the insane pace of advances in the previous century (from atomic theory, to relativity to Quantum Theory to the Standard Model), physics is in a crisis. Smolin attempts to understand that crisis, both from a scientific viewpoint and from a more sociological/philosophical viewpoint as well. Now, there's no more hoary a cliche than the brilliant scientist that turns to philosophy of science in his dotage, mostly to his embarrassment, but Smolin is no geezer and he definitely doesn't embarrass himself is his attempt to understand why the incredibly bright community of physicists has failed to make significant progress in such a long time. Smolin is certainly not afraid to criticize the String Theory community for being too single-minded, for refusing to entertain alternative ideas about theoretical physics, or the physicists themselves for being a bit arrogant or dismissive of their colleagues.

This is a brave and worthwhile book. Read it to learn a lot of physics. Read it to learn a lot about the culture of physics. But definitely read it.

Two blogs to check out in relation to this book, one pro-String Theory and one more skeptical are the group blog Cosmic Variance (example here) and Not Even Wrong (here).

Here & there

A bit of catching up from around the blogosphere:

• Video games: The invisible middleman of the industry by Ted Kritsonis. It seems that Canada is not only a world leader in video game production, but in software shops that build the tools the developers use to build their games.
  
  
• Get a First Life! Reminds me of about a million science fiction stories about virtual worlds where people become so addicted that their physical selves wither away and die. There should be bibliography out there somewhere...
  
  
• Biologists helping bookstores. It seems that people are moving ID, etc, books out of science sections in bookstores and into other sections. Hmmm. Sounds like a good idea. I should make sure we don't have any ID books classified as science in our collection.
  
  
• The Seven Signs of Bogus Science. A bit of an older item, but still well worth reading. Pin it up on the notice board in your library, even.
  
  
• Issues in Scholarly Communication blog. It's new to me, but it seems like a very worthwhile blog to watch.
  
  
• Rebecca at Adventures in Applied Math has a great ongoing series which makes up a kind of Course on Supercomputing. It includes sections on parallel programming, Unix, batch scripts, makefiles and other topics. It's obviously not done yet, but I certainly look forward to more installments. Some of its a bit hairy, but well worth the effort to get the gist.

Science faculty & the tenure process

If you're at an academic institution, you probably see a lot of the junior faculty members scurrying around, looking tense and nervous. They're the ones who are hoping to get tenure. But just what are they going through?

Rob Knopp of Galactic Interactions recently vented big time in The Astronomy Community to Rob Knop : "Get out. You aren't good enough" and I thought the post was extremely illuminating. It's generating quite a buzz out there in the science blogosphere and I thought I'd give a little link summary here to give a flavour of the discussion.

But first, a bit from the original post:

The simple fact is that there are too many research astronomers out there in comparison to the number our society is willing to support. There is a lot of evidence to this. How competitive it is to get a faculty job in the first place. But, the simple fact that if you're going to play in this game, you need money: money to travel to conferences, money to travel to telescopes, money to pay grad students over the summer and (ideally) during the year. And, money to convince your University that you're a worthy researcher. If the NSF is only funding 16-20% of the astronomy proposals it gets, even considering resubmissions, there are too many people.

And I'm one of the ones below the cut. Never mind that I'm one of the most popular AAS Shapley lecturers this year, never mind how much I contribute to Vanderbilt, never mind any skills I may have in teaching, never mind how many undergraduate research projects I've mentored. I'm trying to play in a game where there are more people doing it than there is support for it. Vanderbilt can only afford to keep the best, where the criteria for "best" includes "ability to get funding." That's a rare quality that evidently I don't have.

Wow, now that's real insight into the life of a working academic scientist, the fears and insecurities and the irrational craziness of some parts of academic culture. There's lots more, please check it out. Needless to say, the comments are flying fast and furious on this and other posts.

As promised, here's a few other related posts kicked off by Knopp's cri de coeur.

• Two at Cosmic Variance, here and here.
  
• Uncertain Principles
  
• Open Reading Frame
  
• Greedy, Greedy Algorithms

More videos -- CERN, Google & anti-ID

I just love these science-y videos:

• Robert Scoble's Scoble Show has yet another cool physics-related video, this time a tour of CERN: CERN Tour: Beginnings of the Web features interviews with Ben Segal and Jean-Francois Groff as they tool around CERN.
  
  
• The Google Librarian Central blog points out that there are lots of Google related videos in Google Video. I already knew about their Google TechTalks but I hadn't heard of their Authors@Google series featuring authors such as Neil Gaiman, Ken Jennings (Jeopardy) and Scott Rosenberg (Dreaming in Code).



• Via Evolving Thoughts, a whole series of video interviews debunking creationism and intelligent design. There are 24 installments, mostly in the 5-10 minute range. Well worth checking out.

SLACer videos (and a CERN one too)

Via Chris Leonard, a series of three videos produced by Robert Scoble's Scoble Show: A Videoblog about
Geeks, Technology and Developers featuring his visit to SLAC. There's a total of nearly 2 hours of video. I haven't watched it all yet, but what I have watched is very good.

• Tour of Stanford Linear Accelerator's visitor center
  
• Meet Paul Kuntz, developer of first Web site in United States
  
• Talk with first U.S. Web site team

There's lots of cool looking stuff in the Scoble Show, include a couple of Cooking with Geeks videos.

Also via Chris, a short video from the PhysMathCentral featuring an interview with Jens Vigen, librarian at CERN. He talks quite a bit about open access, preprints, eprints and how that all plays out in the world of particle physics. A great quick introduction to scholarly communication patterns in that branch of physics.