by D Allan Bromley, Springer-Verlag New York, ISBN 0387952470, $59.95.
Senior statesman of US physics, Allan Bromley, has chosen the centenary of the American Physical Society to offer an illustrated review of the last 100 years of physics. At various times in his career, Professor Bromley has been president of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He was also founder of Yale’s nuclear structure laboratory, and is Sterling professor of the sciences and dean of engineering at Yale. All of these achievements make him very well qualified to present a successful and accessible overview of 20th-century physics.
Pictures are the stars of this book, bringing the highly readable narrative to life. The reader’s eyes are spoiled by images such as that of J Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller shaking hands, despite their well publicized differences. The great advances in accelerators are brought home by the picture of the original Cockcroft-Walton machine, and the hilarious photo of Isidor Rabi cooking hot dogs on the coil head of the Columbia cyclotron demonstrates not only that cooling technology has improved over the years, but that physicists can have a delicious sense of humour.
What A Century of Physics necessarily lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in breadth. After covering events from the early part of the century, such as the Annus Mirabilis of 1932 and the Manhattan project, Bromley moves on to discuss post-war physics. He covers subjects as diverse as superconductivity and the evolution of computers, and he explains the Standard Model and covers the research activity of laboratories all around the world.
At the end of the book, Bromley draws connections between particle physics research and cosmology. In the book’s final breath, he goes back to the start of it all. Ten unanswered questions conclude his report, opening the door to a new century of physics.
