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"The history is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great thinkers." New Scientist "Arthur I. Miller's thoroughly researched book gives a fascinating account of the two men's journey into the unexplored territory between the physical and the psychic..." http://plus.maths.org/issue51/reviews/book1/index.html "This absorbing dual biography charts the "strange friendship" between two unusual men: physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung." www.scotsman.com "The book serves as the first popular biography of this outstanding scientist and is long overdue." THE "Miller is cleverly quizzical about two mavericks who sparked off one another in a quest for a primal number that would provide, in the words of Douglas Adams, "the answer to life, the Universe and everything"." --The Times
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The question of whether there is a number at the root of the universe, a primal number that everything in the world hinges on, has exercised many great minds of the twentieth century, among them the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Their obsession with the power of certain numbers - including 137, which describes the atom's fine-structure constant and has great Kabalistic significance - led them to develop an unlikely friendship and to embark on a joint mystical quest reaching deep into medieval alchemy, dream interpretation and the Chinese Book of Changes. "137" explores the profound intersection of modern science with the occult but above all it is the tale of an extraordinary, fruitful friendship between two of the greatest thinkers of our times.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book because I was intrigued by the title. As a non-scientist I love books which elucidate science for the ordinary reader - the lay person - and which inspire me to see the world in a different way and this is certainly one of those. It's a fascinating read about two seminal and intriguing personalities - Wolfgang Pauli, a major figure in the development of quantum physics, and Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis. Pauli was a very atypical scientist. While other scientists were very competitive and obsessed with their work, he was a more rounded personality. He spent time in the bar districts of Hamburg, had relationships with cabaret singers and eventually went too far and ended up on Jung's couch. This marked the beginning of a very fruitful relationship for both Jung and Pauli. As well as science and psychoanalysis, the book ranges across alchemy, the I Ching, mandalas and other areas which were of interest to Jung and also became of interest to Pauli, who realised that science alone was not enough to give a full description of the universe. Miller tells this fascinating story lucidly and brilliantly.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Read Paul Davies' excellent 'In Search of Schrodingers Cat' a couple of years back, and mixed with the lively description of the development of Quantum Physics was the odd entertaining biographical detail about the scientists at the centre of the discoveries.
I wanted to find out more about the remarkable individuals who contributed to Quantum Theory so I bought 137. Beware. Whereas more accoplished science writers will methodically take a reader through the complexities of a theory or discipline, Mr Miller throws glib analogies and journalistic phrases your way with no explanation. For a book about Science it is extremely unscientific. At times its downright laughable: One scientist is described as 'discovering 137' blimey how did we count to 138 before that!
This firmly knocked my confidence in Mr Miller's abilities as a biographer to boot. Fearing the worst kind of pyschobabble I bailed out before the book entered the murky world of alchemy and the I Ching.
One to avoid.
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat
I wanted to find out more about the remarkable individuals who contributed to Quantum Theory so I bought 137. Beware. Whereas more accoplished science writers will methodically take a reader through the complexities of a theory or discipline, Mr Miller throws glib analogies and journalistic phrases your way with no explanation. For a book about Science it is extremely unscientific. At times its downright laughable: One scientist is described as 'discovering 137' blimey how did we count to 138 before that!
This firmly knocked my confidence in Mr Miller's abilities as a biographer to boot. Fearing the worst kind of pyschobabble I bailed out before the book entered the murky world of alchemy and the I Ching.
One to avoid.
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4 reviews
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Physics & Metaphysics
3 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback
This book is about the number One Hundred Thirty-Seven, which is the value of the the fine-structure constant (alpha). This constant is the way physicists describe the probability that an electron will emit or absorb a photon. Alpha is the square of the charge of the electron divided by the speed of light times Planck's constant. Thus 137 in itself combines the true fundamentals of electromagnetism (the electron charge), relativity (the speed of light), and quantum mechanics (Planck's constant). And most intriguingly, Alpha is a strictly dimensionless number. Clearly the observation of alpha being constant (137) and dimensionless seems to support the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. The anthropic principle is the collective name for several ways of asserting that the observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the life observed in it. Throughout the Thirties and Forties, the greatest scientists of the day tried and failed to figure out the magic number 137. The great Werner Heisenberg told his friends that the problems of quantum theory would disappear only when 137 was explained. One of Heisenberg's friends, theorist Wolfgang Pauli, wasted endless research time trying to multiply pi by other numbers to get 137; Edward Teller, now a prominent advocate of star wars, derived alpha from gravitation. In mathematics one hundred thirty-seven is the 33rd prime number; the next is 139, with which it comprises a twin prime, and thus 137 is a Chen prime. 137 is an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and a real part of the form 3n -1. It is also the fourth Stern prime. 137 is a strong prime in the sense that it is more than the arithmetic mean of its two. 137 is a strictly non-palindromic number and a primeval number. Clearly 137 seems to be a very special number. This book describes the famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli's struggle with this number and how he had to seek help from the world renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Together they delved into what Jung called "the no-man's land between "Physics and the Psychology of the Unconscious'. In the end Pauli died in hospital room 137
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Pauli and Jung cosmic brainstorm
6 Oct 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Great book. Of course one will be interested in Jung or Pauli or both. The book focuses more on Pauli and provides biographical information at a brisk pace. Jung not as much. The thesis of the book occupies itself with the magic number of the cosmos. Both jung and Pauli brainstorm the magic number and it appears both of them made fantastic discoveries as a result. The book keeps on the right side of the maths and so the reader can read the book without been spooked by technical details. The story is told at a snappy pace and is well worth a read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Duplicate Book--Revised
28 Oct 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book itself is quite interesting and really the only affordable book on the Jung/Pauli relationship. Amazon has fixed the duplication of this and the hardback version, so now I can completely recommend this book.
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