Physicists will be bolstered by Lindley’s bottom line: Like Boltzmann, theorizing is okay. Science buffs may need to have...
A tribute to the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, whose early work “laid the groundwork” for quantum and chaos theory.
Lindley (The End of Physics, 1993) has several goals: to honor Boltzmann, to emphasize that 20th- and 21st-century physics owe debts to the so-called era of classical physics (c. 1850–1900), and to solidify the argument that theoretical physicists are not simply quark-gazers—they open new ways for experimental physicists to think about matter and energy (as well as time and the Big Bang). Boltzmann, born in 1844 to a middle-class family in the Vienna of imperial Austria, entered the University of Vienna in 1867 with no notable signs of scientific genius. But he was quickly attracted to the ideas about atoms that were then swirling among a few scientists in Austria and elsewhere. Boltzmann developed a theory about the behavior of atoms: using statistical methods that included reckoning probability, Boltzmann offered mathematical evidence that the behavior of invisible, but numerous, beads of matter (atoms) were responsible for, for instance, how gas responded to temperature and pressure. Lindley brings in scientists from around the world to defend and challenge Boltzmann’s theories in detail. Austrian scientists in particular confronted him on his theory of atoms: If you can’t see it, does it really exist? Nevertheless, Boltzmann established an international reputation, with support from Emperor Franz-Josef. Despite what most would call a successful career—he was in demand from prestigious universities—the pressure of scientific and academic politics got to Boltzmann, and he eventually committed suicide, even as successors Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and others were acknowledging their debt to him. Lindley devotes a chapter to connecting the dots of 19th- and 20th-century physics with a history of atomic theory that dates back to the 4th century in Greece.
Physicists will be bolstered by Lindley’s bottom line: Like Boltzmann, theorizing is okay. Science buffs may need to have references at hand, however, to refresh their memories on the principles of thermodynamics and kinetic energy.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85186-5
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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