Equations lie at the heart of many of the most extraordinarily successful scientific theories. Here, some of the greatest living scientists unpack the best known equations so that they become understandable, and we are entertained and enlightened by a knowledge of how it was arrived at, what it can do and what remains to be understood about it.
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Through a study of celebrated examples, the collection of essays in It Must Be Beautiful sets out to reveal the true nature of an equation. What is an equation, after all? Why does it look the way it looks? Those lacking a scientific education can have only the vaguest idea. For a start, an equation is not one fixed thing. The same scribbles can be reinterpreted over time. (Frank Wilczek's chapter on the Dirac Equation offers fascinating insights into this process.) An equation's value can be contested, at one moment a mere "convenience", at the next, a profound expression of things. (Arthur I Miller, writing on Schrodinger's wave equation, beautifully captures the knives-drawn business of scientific interpretation.) An equation can even be a kind of political agenda. Take the Drake Equation--more properly, a formula, describing the likelihood of extra-terrestrial civilisations. Oliver Morton's acute account identifies in this equation "the classic technocratic lapse of mistaking the ability to state a question in the language of science with the ability to solve it using the practices of science". This problem haunts (as it should) the whole collection. As Farmelo writes in his introduction (paraphrasing Feynman) "... it may eventually turn out that fundamental laws of nature do not need to be stated mathematically and that they are better expressed in other ways".
Some essays here never really get to grips with the hieroglyphics, choosing instead to trace the evolution of their subject's thoughts. Others go to the other extreme. Roger Penrose's essay on General Relativity delivers the mathematical punches other science books normally pull. But by one route or another, according to your preference, you will come away from this book with a more-than-trivial insight into the power and beauty of equations. Indeed, the notion that the world could be "better expressed in other ways" is likely to be furthest from your mind. --Simon Ings --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
A clutch of the world's most influential scientists explain in laymen's terms some of the best known and important equations that lie at the heart of many of the most successful scientific theories. A critically acclaimed book of wide general interest that will become a solid stock title for all bookshops.
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The twentieth century chose some undeserving characters to be its celebrities, but it selected its favourite scientist with excellent taste. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The twentieth century chose some undeserving characters to be its celebrities, but it selected its favourite scientist with excellent taste. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This book brings together world-class scientists, and gets each of them to write an essay on a great equation of modern science. If you are a scientist yourself, then this really is a pick-and-mix gem of a book. All of the essays can be read in isolation, and many are truly excellent - BoB May's account of the breakthrough which resulted in the birth of chaos theory is about the best introduction to the subject that anyone could write. Also, Oliver Morton's account of the Drake equation - which estimates the number of intelligent life forms in the galaxy - is fascinating, not least because of the unexpected subtelties which are revealed. But, although the amount of maths is almost zero, not all of the essays are accessible to everyone without a scientific background. In general, I would say that a complete non-scientist might enjoy three or four of the essays, a pre-university science student about half a dozen - and someone with a science degree would enjoy virtually all of the twelve.
If you have an interest in science, it is truly amazing to see how some of these really simple equations went on to provide insights into some of the deepest scientific questions known to mankind. And it is equally fascinating to see how some of our greatest minds were steered towards their historic discovery. Definitely a must-have!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By J. Cronin
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
This is a collection of essays on various topics, such as quantum physics, chaos theory and ecology. The star in each essay is an equation which the author deems to be beautiful. Beautiful in the sense that it encapsulates and defines it's subject matter. Beautiful in the sense that it has an elegance, even when defining a complex topic.
The opening essay in this book centres on Einstein's E=hf equation and the foundations for modern quantum mechanics. It's a fascinating read, illuminating a truly revolutionary period in physics. The story is well told, down to Einstein's reluctance to commit himself to a particle view of waves.
Other physics essays are included, one in particular documenting the conflict that arose between Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Born in formulating quantum mechanics. It adds a truly personal and dramatic spin to the story. Other topics such as the Yang-Mills equation, governing invariances and symmetry in fundamental particles, I found less interesting, probably because I never liked that topic anyway.
The essay on ozone depletion, and the very simple equations that describe it, is very captivating. It shows how simple equations describe a phenomena that we were reluctant to face for years. The essay on modelling animal populations shows how mathematics has given a preciseness of sorts and a template for describing events to biology and ecology that did not exist before.
Moreover, this collection as a whole, serves to convey the fact that all sciences have changed radically over the last 100 years or so. Progress has occurred at an incredible rate, and many changes to the scientifuc way of thinking have taken place. But we always hope that our method for describing events will contain an inherent beauty, because after all the world around us is beautiful.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The quantities on the two side of each of the equations in the book, are from science, or from life. The equations result from scientific experiments or from pure theory. Planck's equation signaled the start of atomic physics, and Einstein's E=m c^2 , the continuation. Dirac's equation reveals the secrets of the electron. All the equations predict physical reality; and yet they are strikingly simple to state, perhaps not to fully understand.-- They *are* beautiful! . Really! They are also fundamental discoveries that affect us all. Schrodinger's equation [along with the equivalt formulation of Heisenberg] puts quantum theory on a solid footing, and started wave mechanics. Shannon's equations initiated the age of information technology. And there are more: relativity, astronomy, dynamics, chemestry... The book consists of chapters written by authorities in the field, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg..., but no [or at least very little] knowledge of science is assumed on the part of the reader. Highly recommended!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant
Worth buying for Roger Penrose's essay on General Relativity alone - thirty pages that helped an enthusiastic amateur like me more than many hundreds of pages of popular science... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Neil
2.0 out of 5 stars
hmm could be better
Being a potential physics student for uni (with an offer from Oxford Uni) this year, I decided to continue to expand my knowledge of science. Read more
Published 14 months ago by A. Nim
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different take on science writing
These bite-sized essays are just enough to inform and challenge without intimidating the non-expert reader, thanks in part to the authors' habit of looking at the key players... Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2010 by Stardust
3.0 out of 5 stars
Poor in parts, awful in others, rarely any good
This book started out really badly. The foreword was a boring, pretentious piece that attempted to compare science to poetry, and succeeded only in boring the pants off me. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2010 by Yossu
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well worth the read - some excellent contributors !
At first I was disappointed – the most beautiful equation in the world, e^i.pi = -1, was missing! Read more
Published on 25 July 2003 by Keith Appleyard
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