"Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics"
George Johnson
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
As a long-time fan of sci.physics (and an occasional poster of
questions here), I thought some of you might be interested to know that
my book "Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in
20th-Century Physics" is about to be published by Knopf. Information is
available at http://talaya.net/strangebeauty.html.
Many thanks.
George Johnson
johnsonATnytimesDOTcom
--
Jim Carr
>
>As a long-time fan of sci.physics (and an occasional poster of
>questions here), I thought some of you might be interested to know that
>my book "Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in
>20th-Century Physics" is about to be published by Knopf. Information is
>available at http://talaya.net/strangebeauty.html.
Since I have read almost all of this book twice, and parts of it
three times, while in draft form, I should comment. First, any
reference to "relativistic mass" that remains is not my fault!!
Second, it is a *really* good book, primarily because the writing
style commented on in the Lewin 'review' makes it an extremely
engaging read, and because of the careful fact checking hinted
at by "that Gleick person" in the other 'review'. (And if you
know what that quoted reference to the author of Chaos means,
you will ___really___ enjoy this book.) I think it comes out
in bookstores in October.
My dad (a retired civil engineer) read most of it (the main draft)
during a visit down here, and only found a few paragraphs to be heavy
going for him. George does a good job making the science understood
and tying it into other things going on at the same time. In my
case, I had George hold off sending me the draft until he was done
with the chapter I would look at first if I picked up the book in
a store (the one on "Aces and Quarks"). Excellent. Then I went
back to the beginning to learn how that hyphen got in Gell-Mann,
and it only got better. I got out the red pen on the 2nd read. ;-)
This is not a Pais-type scientific biography, but it does cover the
important physics events quite well and documents some things that
are not in other histories of this era.
--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | Commercial e-mail is _NOT_
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/ | desired to this or any address
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | that resolves to my account
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | for any reason at any time.
George Johnson
Thanks for making my day.
Jim's comments on the manuscript were invaluable. I _think_ I dealt
with the relativistic mass issue satisfactorily. It was tricky since
the reference occurs in a scene involving Viki Weisskopf's early
childhood. So I wanted to be true to the thinking of the time, while
acknowledging the more refined view that now prevails. I hope that,
with Jim's counsel, I pulled it off.
I saw Gell-Mann Monday night at a reception in Santa Fe (he's giving
the annual Ulam lectures at the Santa Fe Institute.) He said, rather
gruffly, "So when is this thing coming out?" I think he's as
apprehensive as I am. He hasn't read it yet.
George Johnson
http://talaya.net/strangebeauty.html
In article <7sbc7g$4g0$1...@news.fsu.edu>, Jim Carr