By Wojciech Florkowski

World Scientific

Hardback: £66 $96

Wojciech Florkowski’s book on ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions appears right at the beginning of a new era in the field. In 2010, two new experimental heavy-ion programmes started at CERN. First, lead nuclei were accelerated to the highest ever energy – 1.38 TeV per nucleon – at the LHC and rich experimental results were released by the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collaborations, even during the first data-taking period in November/December 2010. Second, in parallel, a new fixed-target heavy-ion programme at CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was launched with the acceleration of lead beams to the lowest-ever energy in the SPS, namely 13.9 GeV per nucleon. This was to study the use of the fragment separator in producing secondary light-ion beams for the NA61/SHINE experiment. These two research programmes are perfectly complementary. The one at the LHC aims at a systematic investigation of hot and dense quark-gluon plasma. The one at the SPS, on the other hand, will search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter and study the properties of the onset of deconfinement.

This book by Florkowski is highly relevant for all participants in the new programmes at CERN. I am convinced that it may also help all non-heavy-ion physicists involved in experiments at CERN to understand the language and excitement of their heavy-ion colleagues.

Furthermore, it gives an excellent introduction to and an in-depth review of the standard theoretical framework that is used to interpret the heavy-ion data. It provides a clear, logical and unified description of statistical, hydrodynamical and kinetic models. All this is illustrated by a selection of the most relevant experimental results of the past programmes at Brookhaven’s Alternating Gradient Synchrotron and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, as well as at the SPS. Finally, there are various exercises in each chapter for use as a textbook in a graduate course.

All in all, this book is highly recommendable both for heavy-ion and non-heavy-ion physicists.

by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder, Vintage Books. Paperback ISBN 9780099521341, £7.99. E-book ISBN 9781409076667, £8.16.

I first came to know the housekeeper, her son and the memory-impaired professor through their roles in an in-flight movie en route from Tokyo to Frankfurt. The filmmaking is beautiful and the acting sublime, but the real surprise is the subject matter. This is a story about “Euler’s identity”, and it carries it off brilliantly, leaving behind a true appreciation of the beauty of numbers. I stepped off the plane wondering if Hollywood could ever do such a thing, and so was happy to discover that at least the novel on which the film was based has an English translation, now available in paperback.

The Housekeeper and the Professor tells the story of a mathematician whose short-term memory following an accident is limited to 80 minutes. He makes his way through the day thanks to Post-it notes, but each morning is a new beginning. It’s a story of platonic affection, shared between the professor, his housekeeper and her 10-year-old son and as such is reminiscent of Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road. Where it diverges, however, is in its core theme. Rather than through a shared love of books, the protagonists’ relationship blossoms by way of mathematics.

Maths is perhaps the most difficult of sciences to popularize. Even Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician and Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, struggles to convey the beauty of numbers in his engaging BBC documentary, The Story of Maths. But where du Sautoy bravely tackles the full story, Ogawa focuses on just one of mathematics’ most remarkable equations, e^iπ+1=0, gently preparing the reader to understand why this deceptively simple collection of symbols is so extraordinary.

The key to Ogawa’s success is the pace of the story, dictated by the fact that the professor begins every day anew. Each morning starts with the same basic conversation, pointing out the significance of a particular number. “What’s your shoe size?” asks the professor, for example. “24,” comes the reply and the professor goes on to explain that this is the factorial of four. As the conversation develops, we learn that the housekeeper’s phone number is the total number of primes between one and 100 million, and a little more maths appears with each conversation.

The square root symbol makes its first appearance as early as the first page – “Root” is what the professor calls the housekeeper’s boy. “With this one little sign, we can come to know an infinite range of numbers, even those we can’t see,” he explains. And sure enough, the square root of –1 makes its introduction two pages later. For e and π, we have to wait until much later.

The maths is never overwhelming, each step being carefully introduced for the benefit of the housekeeper and Root. A shared passion for baseball proves fertile ground for mathematical conversation. We learn, for example, that Babe Ruth’s 1935 record of 714 home runs multiplied by its successor (715 set by Hank Aaron in 1974) is equal to the product of the first seven primes and that the sum of the prime factors of 714 and 715 is the same. Because consecutive numbers with this property are rare – there are only 26 such pairs up to 20,000 – they’re known as Ruth-Aaron pairs. Mathematics like this weaves its way through the story so that by the time Euler’s identity is unveiled, the shock of finding a square root on the first page has been replaced by the pleasure of playing with numbers. Euler’s identity is the breathtaking icing on the cake.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a beautifully told and ultimately touching tale. But perhaps its greatest achievement is that it leaves the reader with a sense of awe at the beauty of numbers.

Yoko Ogawa has published more than 20 works of fiction and non-fiction and won every major Japanese literary prize, says her biography on the Macmillan Publishing website. Two of her novels and a collection of short stories are now available in English. Her non-fiction collaboration with mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara has not yet been translated. Personally, I can’t wait.

by David Goodstein, Princeton University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780691139661, £15.95 ($22.95). E-book ISBN 9781400834570, $22.95.

Now that we can easily access scientific papers without leaving our offices, thanks to the availability of electronic versions of the most important journals, many of us at CERN rarely visit the library. Yet there are many other good reasons to stop by, among them the recently created bookshop, which houses a diverse collection of interesting books. This is where I first saw this book, in which David Goodstein shares his knowledge and reflections on scientific misconduct, including first-hand reports on some of the allegations that he studied as Caltech’s vice provost.

Throughout the book, Goodstein presents several cases with considerable detail, such that the reader is invited to judge whether scientific misconduct happened or not. The opening case describes Robert Millikan’s determination of the electron’s charge, based on measurements of 58 oil droplets, and addresses the allegation that this was a subset of all observations, selected because they were in line with the experimenter’s convictions. The verdict, “not guilty”, is supported by 22 informative pages, offering the reader a tour of the difficulties of the experiment – in the context of 1912 – including an explanation of why viscosity played a more important role than gravity or electricity in understanding the movement of the oil drops. I particularly enjoyed seeing four pages from the original notebooks where the measurements were written down. Rather than “manipulating” his data, Millikan carefully selected high-quality observations to obtain an accurate measurement: his result agrees with the modern value within its quoted 0.2% uncertainty.

The book also contains a highly entertaining report of the “strange and complex case of cold fusion”, following the saga from March 1989 to recent days. Here there is also no evidence of scientific fraud, defined by the author as “faking or fabricating data or plagiarism”. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons should not have announced their “discovery” as they did (in a press conference) and when they did (too early, fearing to be scooped by someone else). Nuclear fusion on a tabletop would really be too good to be true and many physicists and electrochemists promptly dismissed those claims after finding that they could not reproduce the results in their own labs; but “self-delusion, misperceptions, unrealistic expectations and flawed experimentation are not instances of scientific fraud”. Real fraud, in physics, is illustrated by the putative discovery of element 118 by Victor Ninov (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and by the “remarkable” breakthroughs of Jan Hendrik Schön (Bell Labs) in the field of organic semiconductors. Caltech’s own problems of research misconduct are illustrated with two cases in biology.

The first chapter is particularly worth reading, reminding us of the main ideas of Francis Bacon and Karl Popper regarding the scientific method, although I prefer the elegant summary provided by Bo Anderson back in 1984: “Nature never tells you when you are right but only when you are wrong; therefore, you have only learned something when you disagree with the data.” Also, Richard Feynman argued that scientists should carefully report everything they are aware of that could invalidate their measurements or models. Goodstein shows that these laudable ideas are not really suitable in the real world, to ensure rapid and robust scientific progress. Based on his own experience, he argues that bad theories and the experiments that prove them wrong are “quickly and quietly forgotten”. Who has ever received a Nobel prize for showing that a model disagreed with data? After listing “fifteen seemingly plausible ethical principles for science”, he systematically reveals their insufficiencies as guidelines to sound scientific conduct and replaces them with a more pragmatic “user’s manual” on how to pursue a successful and honest career in science.

I would have liked to have seen more examples of scientific fraud, including cases of fabricated data in biology and medicine, but it is understandable that Goodstein prefers to address cases he knows well. Although a little “Caltech-centric”, this is an interesting and easy-to-read book, suitable for relaxing with at the end of the year.

by Richard M Weiner, CreateSpace. Paperback ISBN 9781451501728, $9.99.

Still looking for Christmas presents? Maybe one for your auntie who still doesn’t understand what you find so fascinating about physics? You may have already tried buying her popular science books, but they are sitting on a shelf, unread? Well, here is a book with an interesting basic idea: a novel about a scientist, a young genius with well developed mad streaks, a dramatic death in a computing centre, capable and less capable police forces from various countries, privately funded research organizations, CERN (as we do and don’t know it) and a theory. What if one could change the constants of nature? What if, for example, the charge of the electron could be modified in a way that it would have an influence on the size of atoms? Do smaller atoms mean smaller people, and would that solve the world’s energy crisis?

Richard Weiner, author and professor of theoretical physics, based at Marburg University in Germany and the University of Paris-Sud, France, thought that this idea was worth exploring – at least in fiction. His first “science thriller”, published in 2006 in German and in 2010 in English, first kills scientist Trevor McCallum and then traces his steps from geeky childhood via troubled adolescence to genial research and his last moments before he dies of an improbable surge in computational power. Sounds like good holiday reading?

Well, unfortunately your auntie might not be too impressed because The Miniatom Project does not really hold what it promises. While the precept is certainly original and the idea to use it in a novel to engage the non-scientist is laudable, the plot is very constructed, dialogues and characterizations clunky and the tone at times verges on being patronizing. Inconsistencies about CERN and thinly disguised CERN personalities (an attempt at a roman à clef?) will not trouble your auntie that much, but the translation is likely to grate with her. CERN certainly is fertile soil for art and fiction of all kinds but The Miniatom Project could have done with more editing before going to print.

by Lee Pullen, Mariana Barrosa and Lars Christensen (ed.), ESO. Hardback ISBN 9783923524648. €9.90. Free PDF version available from www.postcardsfromuniverse.org.

I’m a sucker for beautiful astronomy books and this one ticks all of the right boxes, right from the table of contents, which shows an artist’s view of the Earth stretching out into deep space. It is a good visualization of the depth and breadth of the science covered by the book.

This is no ordinary astronomy photo book. It is a compilation of articles by the Cosmic Diary bloggers who told their story throughout the International Year of Astronomy, 2009. As an anthology of front-line astronomy, it will soon date but it will have lasting value as a snapshot of the different researchers – first-person accounts that personalize the science and give a picture of the reality of life in research. The biographies serve to underline the truly international dimension of the research. Indeed, I am impressed by the variety of the bloggers, spanning five continents, which is no mean feat.

The array of subjects is also impressive – from a fascinating account of meteorites to the recipe for making stars. However, as the links between particle physics and astronomy become stronger, I would have liked to have read something about neutrinos or on gravitational waves, rather than a third description of how to detect exoplanets.

It is perhaps inevitable that the book’s biggest strength – its diversity – also gives rise to some weaknesses. This includes a mixed bag of writing styles and a few rather acronym-heavy, dry accounts. And the English does not always flow comfortably. But the approach of only light-handed editing is an attractive one because it allows the writers’ personalities to show through. The vast majority of the contributions are written in a chatty, friendly style and take the reader on a visual voyage of discovery.

If I chose to study physics, it was partly because I stumbled on a book in my school library about the mysteries surrounding the superluminal jets emanating from the quasar 3C273. Wow, I thought. I want to know more&ellip; I can quite imagine Postcards providing the same inspiration.

Buy it for your teenagers now!