LEADER 03838nam 2200661 a 450 001 9910780198103321 005 20230331015616.0 010 $a1-282-75147-6 010 $a9786612751479 010 $a1-4008-2054-5 010 $a1-4008-1105-8 024 7 $a10.1515/9781400820542 035 $a(CKB)111056486507862 035 $a(EBL)617261 035 $a(OCoLC)705526936 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000231370 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11225870 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000231370 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10207076 035 $a(PQKB)10174675 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC617261 035 $a(DE-B1597)446033 035 $a(OCoLC)979748950 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781400820542 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL617261 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10035794 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL275147 035 $a(EXLCZ)99111056486507862 100 $a19900613d1991 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurnn#---|u||u 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aQuantum profiles$b[electronic resource] /$fJeremy Bernstein 205 $aCourse Book 210 $aPrinceton, N.J. $cPrinceton University Press$dc1991 215 $a1 online resource (187 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 0 $a0-691-08725-3 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 167) and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tPreface --$tJohn Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer --$tEpilogue --$tJohn Wheeler: Retarded Learner --$tEpilogue --$tBesso --$tSelect Bibliography --$tIndex 330 $aFor the prominent science writer Jeremy Bernstein, the profile is the most congenial way of communicating science. Here, in what he labels a "series of conversations carried on in the reader's behalf and my own," he evokes the tremendous intellectual excitement of the world of modern physics, especially the quantum revolution. Drawing on his well-known talent for explaining the most complex scientific ideas for the layperson, Bernstein gives us a lively sense of what the issues of quantum mechanics are and of various ways in which individual physicists approached them.The author begins this series of interconnected profiles by describing the life and work of John Stewart Bell, the brilliant physicist employed at the gigantic elementary particle laboratory near Geneva (CERN), whose "Bell's Inequality" inspired a generation of researchers to confront, by experiment, just how peculiar and counterintuitional quantum mechanics really is. Bernstein then discusses the career of the prodigiously active and creative John Archibald Wheeler, who worked in the beginning stages of almost every branch of contemporary physics and invented the terms "black hole," "ergo-sphere," "geon," "Planck length," and "stellarator." The book closes with a moving commentary on the correspondence, of fifty-two years duration, between Einstein and the gentle, talented, but little-known Swiss engineer Michele Angelo Besso. "Of all the Einstein letters I have read these are surely the most striking, on a purely human level," writes Bernstein of the Einstein-Besso correspondence. "Einstein was not given to close friendships--`the merely personal,' as he once put it--but these letters are filled with `the merely personal,' even though the deep issues of physics and its philosophy are never very far away." 606 $aQuantum theory 606 $aPhysicists$vInterviews 606 $aPhysicists$vBiography 615 0$aQuantum theory. 615 0$aPhysicists 615 0$aPhysicists 676 $a530.1/2/0922 700 $aBernstein$b Jeremy$f1929-$044845 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910780198103321 996 $aQuantum Profiles$9337665 997 $aUNINA