Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality

This book is brilliant. The book details the actors, the stage is Europe and America, The play is called ; "What is reality ?" The actors are mostly upper class, but not all, mostly men with the exception of Marie Curie a woman who remarkably won the Nobel prize twice. Many of the key players are Jewish. the average age of these quantum detectives is just, 24. I found the Timeline at kindle location 6318, to be very helpful. The timeline is an important guide to the rest of the book. The story starts at the birth of Max Planck. on April 23 1858. Referring back and forth to the timeline. The timeline gives us a brief summary of the people, the events and the discoveries. After reading the timeline I then read in detail the rest of the book. I enjoyed reading about how Max Planck was involved in both the science and the politics of Hitler's Germany. One gem, Max Planck at the age of 75, on May 16th 1933 attempted to convince Hitler that some Jewish people or scientists would be very useful to the Germany economy, however Hitler rejected the plea. Before the two World Wars, Europe's top physicists were friends and colleagues. Then war split them into three groups one working for Germany, or working for the Allies and those who remained neutral. The book details how discovery after discovery snow balled the knowledge so much so that this is describe as the Golden age of physics. The discovery of the atom's nucleus and it's empty space by Rutherford and co at Manchester University, UK, with their gold foil experiment is my favourite. The American fission bomb came about as a result of Einstein lobbying the American president. The letter Einstein sent to president Roosevelt about the new bomb had unintended consequences for Japan and the post war world. The dangerous knowledge about E=Mc2 and the huge amounts of energy that is locked up inside atoms, still hangs over mankind to this day. But if Einstein hadn't sent the letter, Hitler may have obtained nuclear weapons first. This is a fantastic story about the rapidly emerging dangers of scientific progress and unintended consequences, The book reminds us that scientist are often the slaves of tyrants and not saints. The book documents and pulls together information from a verity of sources into one place then debates it. The message, war and science are linked and that reality often forces us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Hitler stopped the export of Uranium from mines in areas under his control, well before the start of the second world war. This indicated that Hitler knew about the new bomb. The book highlights that Hitler and Max Planck had some worrying links. Hitler was told about the destructive power of nuclear weapons before the second world war. I wonder who explained the fission bomb to Hitler? and I wonder if he really understood what he was told? Einstein was odd, with that hair and the trousers that were too short, yet he was one of the most remarkable men to have ever lived. This book is full of little details about his life. Einstein could have been accepted into the army, (he failed the medical) If he had been accepted, that would have changed world history. Franz Ferdinand's driver got lost in the back streets of Sarajevo, one wrong turn by his driver led to Ferdinand's death and that triggered World War one. You keep asking yourself as you read more and more, what is reality ? Quantum reality can at times be surreal like Schrödinger's cat, being both alive and dead, smeared over two states in a superposition of reality . Or like Salvador Dali's persistent reoccurring memory. (The painting with the melting clock). Manjit writes in a clear and easy to understand way. I am interested in quantum entanglement, where two particles no matter how far they are apart from each other, are able to communicate information from A to B, faster than light speed. The fact that everything we see around us was at one point in time all inside one particle. And very entangled, then bang, all this that we know and see 13.5 billion years later was once inside that one small entangled super particle. This book must be read in conjunction with other books. My other interest is in quantum computers. I love the book because it shows how the universe is hiding something from us ? We follow the bread crumbs and build machines like CERN then we find that there is more hidden, then even more. My view after reading the book : The greatest discovery will be the invention of a quantum computer, and quantum entanglement will be the way the QC computer will input and output data. It's the only way to side step the measurement problem. A Quantum computer will be able to emulate a human mind. This will lead to "mind uploading". That means digital immortality. We are obviously living inside a giant quantum 3D computer construct now. To quote Dr David Deutsch "The universe is a giant information processing system". And we live inside it and it is inside another universe, Everett's many worlds theory, like those Russian dolls one stacked inside the other. I believe CERN, will decide (one day) that there is a Planck particle at the centre of all hadrons. I believe that there is a tiny 5D black hole, A Planck particle at the centre of every hadron, it's obvious. It is the gravity particle. It grabs energy in proton to proton collisions, this has been observed at CERN and at Fermi Lab. Some energy disappears in all P to P collisions. Where does it go ? It transfers into another dimension or a new time and a new space, via the 5D, and it's singularity. The proof that we live in a programmed world or inside a quantum computer universe is self-evident, in my view, look at anti matter and matter. The outer shell of the anti proton "knows" when it encounters a matter proton. It's surface is smart. Look at the energy needed to rip protons apart, atoms can be compressed with billions of tons per square mm and can withstand temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees C and still remain integral. Yet the soft and gentle encounter with the anti particle and it rips the quarks apart. Why ? What is so powerful that it can un-zip the force that holds the quarks together ? What is the possible mechanism ? How do particles know what they are ? How do protons "know" that they have been observed ? It's a computer programme obviously. That's why Gold and Mercury being chemically only one proton different, have vastly different chemical properties, it's a programme. My opinion from reading this and other books. Quantum physics makes no sense, if a man leaps over a 50 footwall in Grand theft auto we say it's a video game, it's impossible in the real world. What is the real world ? when an atom can be in two or more places at the same time ? The idea that if a particle act as we would expect, in a logical way, then it's reality is a fallacy. If reality has nothing to do with human logic. then the book's message is clear our logic is flawed. CERN is not looking with reality in it's eye. There is no graviton and no higgs particle. What we see in the book is not logical, like Schrödinger's cat, (TE) we are programmed to look for false logic. This mental prejudice, that an atom must be in only one place, is common sense. Science discovered that this common sense works well for hunter gathers. Reality, must logically be independent of observation, energy could not have evolved into all that we see today if it were otherwise. The first ever event had no observer. An ultimate truth otherwise you would have a quantum chicken and egg problem ? Everything must have evolved from a first event. In summary, consider when you place a powerful Trans cranial magnet behind your head your consciousness will fade away, move the magnet away from your head and your consciousness will return. what does that tell you ? Show me in the DNA code where, consciousness is coded? The soul is an electromagnetic ghost. It resides in a quantum computer made of atoms, called the brain, it's the most complex thing in the universe that we know of. Put the atoms in the brain in a blender after death, they can't support the soul or thought in their raw state, why not ? When the data ghost has gone, the soul has gone you cant just call it back. The universe is still hiding a lot from us. I love the men and woman in this book who keep asking why? I ask myself : The body after death is no lighter, it weighs the same. Is death just a data event ? Flat bed F-MRI machines will be soon be able to scan the soul, the electromagnet ghost that is us, and upload it into a quantum computer for full emulation. If the universe is a quantum computer one of Everett's many worlds, and Dr David Deutch is right, souls will be recorded in TIME, in the universes reproductive software and that means souls can be resurrected. Can we find where the universe hides her data ? My bet, it is hidden in "other dimensions" or other parallel universes, or "Server farming in Everett's multiverse". A great title for Manjit's next book. "What is reality"? This was a review of the kindle edition, the book is highly recommended and would be a great gift for a young person thinking of a career in quantum computers. Anyone out there with a few million to invest in quantum computers ? I am free on weekends. Paul Kendall (Leeds, UK)

In the week of Professor Peter Higg’s death (8th April, 2024), I bought this book and am very pleased I did. For anyone interested in the Quantum World, this is an excellent book which provides a detailed, academic history of the Quanum, Despite being published in 2009 with a reprint in 2010, it provides fascinating insights into this world, its events and the scientists involved. It begins with the unique fifth Solvay Conference, held in Brussels from 24th to 29th October, 1927, a conference attended by twenty-nine of the leading scientists of the time, seventeen of which were Nobel Prize winners. In the case of Marie Curie, a double Nobel for Chemistry and Physics, a twin glass ceiling breaker who sits assuming in the front row conference picture. Kumar takes the reader through the exciting (and shocking) history of science’s greatest and most puzzling discoveries, puzzling even to the greatest minds as they wrestled with the mathematics and experiments which explains our reality, provided us with a wondrous source of energy and created the world’s most powerful weapon of mass destruction. Part One: The Quantum Part Two: Boy Physics Part Three: Titans scalar Over Reality Part Four: Does God Play Dice? There is a very helpful twelve page Timeline, a fourteen page Glossary, thirty three pages of chapter notes and a nine page Bibliography, all of which provide very useful guidance, clarity and further routes for enquiry. “‘Princeton is a madhouse,’ and ‘Einstein is a complete cuckoo,’ wrote Robert Oppenheimer. It was January 1935 and America’s leading, homegrown scientist was thirty-one … Einstein accepted that his critical attitude towards quantum mechanics ensured that “‘here in Princeton I am considered an old fool.’” A few letters later, a project in New Mexico and the world changed forever. This period and all the others from 1927 to publication date, 2007, are recorded in minute detail. ‘20?? - A quantum theory of Gravity? A Theory of Everything? A theory beyond the quantum? ‘ Ashtekar variables - the Spin Network. Theory of Everythng - working on it. Beyond Quantum - searching. Perhaps, in a few year’s time, Kumar will write Volume 2. IN the meantime, “Quantum” is a great read.

This book covers the early years of the development of atomic physics. As a scientist, I am familiar with the 'names' in this field via the equations etc named after them. However, I knew little of the detailed background to their personal contributions to this field, and I found the book absolutely fascinating. Indeed, I found it difficult to put down, as the narrative was so compelling that I was keen to know 'what happened next'. It was also remarkable to read that so many of the big names were making major contributions as graduate students or young researchers. Also the wider social history was well woven into the story, from the exclusion of German scientists from major international meetings after the 1st World War, to the impact of the Nazis on German science in the 1930s. My main quibble with the book is the title: whilst the Einstein/Bohr differences are covered, the book is about so much more than this. I would expect interested physicists to find this a good read, but I am not so sure about the non-technical reader. For instance, the independent development of Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and Schrodinger's wave equation, and their eventual correlation, was full of interest for me, but I wonder how compelling the differences between two abstruse theories would be for the reader without a technical background.

I found this to be a great read. Really enjoyed getting the background to the origin of the most important revolution in understanding in physics and reading about the characters involved in the story.

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality, by Manjit Kumar, Icon Books, 2008, 478 ff. A biographical history of quantum theory By Howard Jones This is a biographical history of the development of quantum mechanics. All the personalities involved are here it seems. I've read much on quantum physics but many of the people described in this book were new to me. The story is engagingly told like a novel and the ideas are put as simply as possible for a subject that is so conceptually difficult, but it doesn't go into any detail on quantum physics. Manjit Kumar is a graduate in both physics and philosophy. We begin of course with Max Planck and his discovery of quantum theory at the turn of the century then move swiftly on to the Swiss Patent Office clerk, Albert Einstein. Danish physicist Niels Bohr is the next to move to centre stage, though many of the supporting cast, like Rutherford, Thomson, and Soddy, are discussed as the story unfolds. And so Kumar works through the cast methodically giving each player credit where it is due. A key feature of the book, as the title indicates, is the different views of matter held by Einstein and Bohr. This issue takes up several chapters in the middle of the book. The EPR thought experiment is discussed, as is its verification theoretically by John Bell and experimentally by Alain Aspect. Bohr's vision of complementarity, and the massive contributions to quantum mechanics of Pauli and Dirac are all explained in simple terms. The amount of mathematics in the book is trivial, for those who find the subject intimidating. You'll learn about as much quantum physics as most high school science students from this book but if you want more detail you will need to turn to other books. Frank Close's little Very Short Introduction for Oxford on Particle Physics would be a good place to start. For more detail there's the Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by A.C. Phillips. Kumar's book is primarily about the scientists involved and he brings them to life very well. There are a dozen pages taken up at the end with a useful Timeline of relevant events, a Glossary of terms, and copious Notes and References. For what it sets out to do, this is an excellent book. Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK. Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (Manchester Physics Series)

I bought this after hearing Kumar on a sciency podcast (I think it was Little Atoms), where he was very interesting and entertaining; and I have to say I was disappointed. In writing science history one has to balance the progress of the ideas with the biographies of the people who came up those ideas. For me, Kumar gets the balance wrong. In fact I didn't finish it because I lost patience with what seemed to me excessive scene-setting and personality sketches when I wanted the science. If you enjoy a more human-oriented history of science approach, you may well find this book appealing. There is certainly nothing to complain about in the style, which is easy-going and readable. But, for me at least, the emphasis was wrong and it the end that was too much.

Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful scientific theories ever made. But it is utterly non-intuitive for both the scientist and non-scientist alike. In our everyday lives, things happen for a reason - you place a fork on a table and unless someone comes along and moves it, you can be certain that it will be still there the next day. Not so in the atomic world of quantum mechanics, an electron might be here... or it might be there ... or over there. In fact it could be anywhere in the universe at any given time. Quantum mechanics predicts this behaviour in the form of a probability wave function. And it works. But is this the true nature of reality? This is the theme of the book. We have two great scientists - Einstein and Niels Bohr who have a fundamental difference of opinion about the nature of reality. From Einstein's' point of view, an electron has a real set of parameters such as location, velocity, spin and so on that is independent of an observer. He admits that quantum mechanics does a good job in predicting atomic behaviour but he is convinced the theory is not complete. On the other hand, there is Niels Bohr's vision that an electron (or any microscopic entity) has no reality until an observer chooses to measure one of its parameters. He considers quantum mechanics to be complete with no further need for revision or modification. This argument goes on for decades. The book takes the reader through the panoply of scientists who helped put quantum theory together from its beginnings around 1900 to today. Scientists such as Max Planck, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli, Oppenheimer, Von Neumann and many, many others are included. The appeal of this book is that it brings humanity to the story of quantum mechanics. It shows the egos, the fears, the ambition of these extraordinary people as the story unfolds over decades. If you want a pure explanation of quantum mechanics then you should look to a dry text book. But if you want the human context in which quantum mechanics evolved then I recommend you read this book.

I've started several books on quantum physics, and always get lost somewhere in the middle. This book was the exception. It is very well written in an engaging style as a historical account of how quantum theory developed from the late 19th Century onwards, and provides interesting and valuable insights to the people involved and their personal 'journeys' and challenges. This human interest kept me engaged, although the details of who was a student/professor at which university was too much information for me, personally. The historical time-line also lent a useful narrative to the development of quantum mechanics and the challenges and conflicts, particularly between Bohr and Einstein, throughout the development of this theory. There is also a very useful glossary at the end of the book, so that you can remind yourself of the difference between Pauli's Exclusion Theory and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle!

Très intéressant. Ce livre est une sorte de documentaire de la physique quantique, avec quelques passages techniques mais tout à fait compréhensibles même pour des non-initiés comme moi même. On y découvre les personnages clés et leur contribution. Seul bémol, on reste un peu sur notre faim, car il ne détaille pas du tout les progrès récents en matière de physique quantique. Cependant, j'imagine que ceci nécessiterait au minimum un autre livre entier, d'autant que celui-ci se concentre sur la période Einstein - Bohr, comme son nom l'indique. Cependant, je ne recommande pas de le lire sans un très bon niveau d'anglais.

Un libro appassionante, chiarissimo che introduce i non addetti ai lavori nel mondo bellissimo della fisica moderna dalla relatività alla fisica quantistica, dalle proprietà del universo alle caratteristiche incredibili della struttura della materia. Dovrebbero leggerlo tutti.

The history of the development of quantum physics has been told many times, sometimes for the benefit of future physicists and sometimes more for the general public (as in John Gribben’s books). This book covers the same ground with two differences. One is that Manjit Kumar opts for a middle road in describing in more detail the history of the quantum. As in other histories, the same characters from Max Planck to John Bell are here with biographical sketches of each one in the text. But Kumar also presents more (not a lot) of the basic equations and more of the technical aspects of their work. Kumar does a fine job of digging into the details of the quantum revolution and the non-physicist can always gloss over the material he or she is not interested in. But, while the book is being sold as written for the general public and centered on the Bohr-Einstein debate about reality, it has more details than some readers may expect. The second difference from other histories of the quantum is Kumar’s emphasis (as the title indicates) on the difference between Einstein and Bohr on how to interpret the quantum results. Einstein never denied the reality of the strange results but claimed the theory was “incomplete.” Do cause and effect function at all levels of the universe independent of our observation? Einstein never wavered in the belief that a complete theory of reality could be understood causally (the famous “God does not play dice” quote) and that the weirdness of quantum results would be explained by (or be a subdivision of) that larger more complete picture. Bohr’s claim was that the “quantum world” (he did not like that term) did not function in the same way as our everyday world. Trying to find a theory that encompassed both was pointless because causality as we understand it could not be imposed on the subatomic world. If, as some have claimed, we have to think causally to make sense of our world, then we are in principle incapable of “understanding” the quantum dimensions. What we are left with is the math and the usefulness (and strangeness) of the results of quantum mechanics, from transistors to computers. There is no point trying to subsume electrons or quarks into our classical way of understanding. This is a fascinating debate and Kumar does an excellent job spelling it out when he gets there but he does not actually get there until two-thirds of the way through the book. When the Great Debate finally arrives, it is profoundly interesting. But the book’s title is somewhat misleading since the actual Bohr-Einstein debate is not sharply defined until Part 3, “Titans Clash Over Reality,” on page 251. Kumar covers a great deal of ground and his research is extensive. So, if the reader is looking for a book not just about the main debate itself but also a book with detailed background leading up to the Bohr-Einstein core disagreement, this book is ideal. I would then recommend it.

Ameno y entretenido. Una obra divulgativa que consigue su objetivo: entretener, enseñar y aprender a entender cosas tan complejas.

It is an Amazing book on development of quantum theory and development of science. You get to know about the physicists beyond just names, and what triggered them to enhance the quantum mechanics….Thanks to author to bring out such stories…..