Description

The epic, page-turning history of how a group of physicists toppled the Newtonian universe in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Marie Curie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger, and Albert Einstein didn’t only revolutionise physics; they redefined our world and the reality we live in. In The Age of Uncertainty, Tobias Hurter brings to life the golden age of physics and its dazzling, flawed, and unforgettable heroes and heroines.

The work of the twentieth century’s most important physicists produced scientific breakthroughs that led to an entirely new view of physics – and a view of the universe that is still not fully understood today, even as evidence for its accuracy is all around us. The men and women who made these discoveries were intellectual adventurers, renegades, dandies, and nerds, some bound together by deep friendship; others, by bitter enmity. But the age of relativity theory and quantum mechanics was also the age of wars and revolutions. The discovery of radioactivity transformed science, but also led to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout The Age of Uncertainty, Hurter reminds us about the entanglement of science and world events, for we cannot observe the world without changing it.

Publisher Review

'Highlights the work of Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger, Albert Einstein, and others did together to shake up physics and introduce quantum mechanics, arguing that the field's discovery was a collaborative effort.' * Publishers Weekly * 'Hurter guides us through the time when physicists developed their fundamental theories.' * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *