Books
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin
Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world’s physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. […]
Ordinary Geniuses: Max Delbruck, George Gamow and the Origins of Genomics and Big-Bang Cosmology
Max Delbruck and George Gamow met in 1931 at Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute for Theoretical Physics. Both were promising members of the young cadre drawn into physics by the exciting developments in quantum mechanics. Joined as well by a predilection for practical jokes, they became good friends. But they also seemed to share a desire to do what Gamow referred to as “the pioneering thing” […]
Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics
Finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Fair
Winner of the American Institute of Physics Award for Best Science Writing
In 1932 the glorious years of quantum mechanics’ discoveries were coming to an end and the focus was now turning to the atom’s very core, its miniscule but power-laden nucleus. With the discovery of the neutron in February of that year, it was clear that a new era in physics was about to begin. […]
A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of our Species, Planet and Universe
This book, my first, explored our continual uncovering of temperature’s many mysteries, from the causes of fevers in humans to the finding of thermophilic bacteria, from measuring the contents of the Sun’s core to studying the Universe’s beginning. […]
Gino Segrè 