Subject Grouping: Praxis

by Richard P Feynman and Steven Weinberg, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521 658622 4 (110pp, pbk £9.95/$11.95)

The text of the 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, long available as a slim hardback, is now available in paperback. Feynman dismantles field theory to find the real reason for the existence of antiparticles, then puts the theory together again. Weinberg’s compelling prose “Towards the final laws of physics” examines how quantum physics can be reconciled with gravity. Over a decade later, the messages in these lectures remain fresh.

by Per F Dahl, Institute of Physics Publishing 0 7503 0633 5 (£35).

Per Dahl is a physicist who has made significant contributions to the design and development of superconducting magnets for particle accelerators. He also has a burning interest in the history of modern science. It is not surprising that he has already written a book on the history of superconductivity (1992 Superconductivity: Its Historical Roots and Development from Mercury to the Ceramic Oxides American Institute of Physics).

Continuing on his history beat, Dahl is also the author of The Flash of the Cathode Rays (1997 Institute of Physics Publishing). Advertised as a history of J J Thomson’s electron, it is in fact a careful documentation (with nearly 100 pages of footnotes) of many other developments in fundamental physics, from time immemorial up to the early 1930s, where the book stops. Dahl is also the son of CERN pioneer and colourful Norwegian scientific personality Odd Dahl (1898­1994).

In Dahl’s new book, heavy water is the hero of a saga that unfolds where Dahl’s previous book left off, and it continues up to 1945. In the early 1940s, just after the discovery of nuclear fission, many people were convinced that heavy water was the key to new nuclear physics progress. With little of the substance around, attention was soon focused on Norway, which had an abundance of hydroelectric power for manufacturing processes.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, both sides were eager to get a supply of heavy water and to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. In 1940 the French cornered 185 kg of Norwegian deuterium, which was spirited to Paris via the UK in an elaborately planned operation. With the invasion of France, the heavy water had to be smuggled out again. It eventually found a temporary home in Windsor Castle, England, before being used in wartime Cambridge and then in Montreal, with Lew Kowarski and Hans von Halban playing leading roles.

In 1942 and 1943, allied commando raids and air strikes on the heavy-water plant in occupied Norway attempted to put the factory out of business. This culminated in the famous 1944 Norwegian Resistance operation, which intercepted a ferry carrying tons of deuterium-rich material en route to Germany and sank it in Lake Tinnsjø. Eighteen lives were lost. In 1965 the episode was made into a film called The Heroes of Telemark, which starred Kirk Douglas.

Dahl manages to combine scientific accuracy with a compelling storyline that keeps the pages turning. Like his cathode-ray book, the volume is meticulously researched, particularly with regards to Norway (although this time the footnotes have been abridged to a mere 57 pages). It is a remarkable read.

by M Dimnassi and J Sjöstrand ISBN 0 521 66544 2 (pbk £24.92/$39.95)

This volume is part of the London Mathematical Society Lecture Note series.

by George Gamow and Russell Stannard, Cambridge, ISBN 0 521 63009 6 (hbk £14.95).

George Gamow was a sort of prototype Richard Feynman ­ gifted, incisive, exuberant, unpredictable and occasionally eccentric. Feynman played bongo drums and opened safes, while Gamow preferred conjuring. Born in Russia in 1904, Gamow gradually emigrated westwards via Göttingen, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Paris and London. He eventually moved to the US in 1934. Gamow left a substantial scientific and literary legacy.

After milestone contributions to nuclear physics (which included the Gamow­Teller coupling), at Göttingen he explained the mystery of alpha radioactivity, showing how quantum tunnelling allowed low-energy particles to escape the pull of the nucleus. When Gamow brought these insights to Cambridge, Rutherford and Cockcroft realized that what goes out can also come in. In a kind of reverse radioactivity, relatively low-energy bombarding particles should be able to enter the nucleus and induce nuclear transformations. From the late 1920s, this motivated the push for particle accelerators.

Working with his student, Ralph Alpher, in Washington in the 1940s, Gamow learned that the young Hans Bethe was visiting the US and invited him to add his name to the famous “Alpher, Bethe, Gamow” papers on the origin of the chemical elements. In the late 1940s, Gamow also helped to develop the ideas that are now known as the Big Bang.

In 1938 he wrote a short science fantasy (being careful not to call it science fiction), in which he tried to explain the ideas of the relativistic curvature of space and the expanding universe. The hero of his story was a modest bank clerk called C G H Tompkins. His initials were borrowed from the standard physics notation for the speed of light, the gravitational constant and Planck’s constant.

After sending the piece to several large circulation magazines and receiving impersonal rejection slips, Gamow put it to one side until his physicist friend, Sir Charles Darwin (the grandson of the author of The Origin of Species), suggested sending it to C P Snow, then the editor of Discovery magazine, published by Cambridge University Press. The text was immediately accepted and the discerning Snow demanded more.

Mr Tompkins tries valiantly to follow dry science lectures, but easily falls asleep. However, all becomes clear in his vivid dreams. Soon the articles were collected into Mr Tompkins in Wonderland, published in 1940, followed by Mr Tompkins Explores the Atom in 1944. Each was a major success and the two volumes were reissued with additional material as a single volume in 1965. This reissue alone was reprinted some 20 times.

Thirty years after this revision, the book was still selling* but was seriously out of date. With Gamow no longer available (he died in 1968), UK physicist Russell Stannard, author of the well-known “Uncle Albert” trilogy (The Time and Space of Uncle Albert, Black Holes and Uncle Albert and Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest), was invited to give Mr Tompkins a facelift. As well as updating the science to include quarks, the Standard Model and supersymmetry, Stannard has also tried to modernize the text. For example, the title of Gamow’s chapter 10 ­ “The gay tribe of electrons” ­ had acquired another connotation over the years and has become “The merry tribe of electrons”. An additional chapter ­ “Visiting the atom smasher” ­ provides an opportunity to introduce a politically correct female spokesperson (however, she is depicted as unfeminine and wearing a white coat).

Although concepts are gently introduced, ultimately there is little attempt to paraphrase. A 120-entry glossary, extending over 10 pages, has been thoughtfully provided.

Tompkins is a moot figure. Although he no longer exclaims “By jove!”, he seems to have got stuck in a time warp. The original illustrations, revised by Gamow for the 1965 reissue, did have a certain charm. Although the pictures have been redrawn for 1999, the original style remains. Mild-mannered Tompkins is still supposed to be in his 30s but looks like a refugee from a Tintin episode. Already a dweeb in the original version, now he is an anachronism. Perhaps it is time for “The World of the New Mr Tompkins” in “now-speak”, where the Internet exists and where dog-eared flip charts have been discarded in favour of Powerpoint displays.

However, the Tompkins character evokes sympathy, and the impressive literary track record of George Gamow and of Russell Stannard shows that packaging basic physics with a veneer of personification and anecdote via dreams and thought bubbles does work.

*The 1965 reissue is available as Mr Tompkins in paperback by George Gamow, Cambridge, ISBN 0 521 44771 2 (£7.95).