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The Merely Personal: Observations on Science and Scientists by Jeremy Bernstein 2001, Ivan R. Dee
This is a collection of widely scattered essays (mostly book reviews). Jeremy Bernstein makes much of his dual career as physicist and writer: it gives him the authority to be harsh wherever uncredentialed authors slip up on their science, and it gives him an astonishing lode of first person stories. This gives him a style which borders on manners, but for the most part he's compulsively readable. The best science piece here is a long and tedious treatment of a Tom Stoppard play about a physicist: the numerous scientific errors are ruthlessly dissected, but the interposed explanation of quantum mechanics is wonderfully precise. Equally interesting is Bernstein's detailing of the evolution of Einstein's thought on quantum mechanics. Indeed, Einstein is something of a cottage industry for Bernstein, providing the book title and two essays: the only qualm I have is over the unsatisfying suggestion that Einstein's cosmological constant may turn out not to be such a blunder after all.
Last revised: 01 Sep 2001, 13:50 CDT
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