3 Review(s)

A fascinating and colourful biography of the father of quantum mechanics, by the bestselling author of the science classic, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian physicist famous for his contribution to quantum physics. He won the Nobel Prize in 1933 and is best known for his thought experiment of a cat in a box, both alive and dead at the same time, which revealed the seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics. Schrodinger was working at one of the most fertile and creative moments in the whole history of science. By the time he was starting university in 1906, Einstein had already published his revolutionary papers on relativity. Now the baton of scientific progress was being passed to a new generation: Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Niels Bohr, and of course, Schrodinger himself. In this riveting biography John Gribbin takes us into the heart of the quantum revolution. He tells the story of Schrodinger's surprisingly colourful life (he arrived for a position at Oxford University with both his wife and mistress). And with his trade mark accessible style and popular touch explains the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, which underpins all of modern science. About the Author John Gribbin gained a PhD from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (then under the leadership of Fred Hoyle) before working as a science journalist for Nature and later New Scientist. He is the author of a number of bestselling popular science books, including In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, In Search of the Multiverse, Science: A History and The Universe: A Biography. He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex and in 2000 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.