By David Gross, Marc Henneaux and Alexander Sevrin (eds.)
World Scientific
Hardback: £58
Paperback: £32
E-book: £24
Since 1911, the Solvay Conferences have helped shape modern physics. The 25th edition in October 2011, chaired by David Gross, continued this tradition, while also celebrating the conferences’ first centennial. The development and applications of quantum mechanics have been the main threads throughout the series, and the 25th Solvay Conference gathered leading figures working on a variety of problems in which quantum-mechanical effects play a central role.
In his opening address, Gross emphasized the success of quantum mechanics: “It works, it makes sense, and it is hard to modify.” In the century since the first Solvay Conference, the worry expressed by H A Lorentz in his opening address in 1911 – “we have reached an impasse; the old theories have been shown to be powerless to pierce the darkness surrounding us on all sides” – has been resolved. Physics is not in crisis today, but as Gross says there is “confusion at the frontiers of knowledge”. The 25th conference therefore addressed some of the most pressing open questions in the field of physics. As Gross admits, the participants were “unlikely to come to a resolution during this meeting….[but] in any case it should be lots of fun”.
The proceedings contain the rapporteur talks and, in the Solvay tradition, they also include the prepared comments to these talks. The discussions among the participants – some involving dramatically divergent points of view – have been carefully edited and are reproduced in full.
The reports cover the seven sessions: “History and reflections” (John L Heilbron and Murray Gell-Mann); “Foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum computation” (Anthony Leggett and John Preskill); “Control of quantum systems” (Ignacio Cirac and Steven Girvin); “Quantum condensed matter” (Subir Sachdev); “Particles and fields” (Frank Wilczek); and “Quantum gravity and string theory” (Juan Maldacena and Alan Guth). The proceedings end – as did the conference – with a general discussion attempting to arrive at a synthesis, where the reader can judge if it fulfilled the prediction by Gross and was indeed “lots of fun”.
