Archive for November, 2015

Genius player

On Wednesday, Graham realised a long-held ambition to meet John Conway, one of the most innovative mathematicians of the past few decades.

John Conway – drawn by Simon J. Fraser (1973)

Inventor of ‘The Game of Life’, surreal numbers and ideas that have found applications in theoretical physics, Conway is a unique figure. Now emeritus professor at Princeton University, he is currently visiting the UK, and has given a special lecture at Cambridge. Graham arranged for him to give an interview in London with The Guardian’s Ian Sample, available as a podcast.

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News

Remembering Steven Weinberg

'The greatest living theoretical physicist' - many commentators in the past few decades have described Steven Weinberg in such terms. ....

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Graham Farmelo

science writer, commentator, consultant

What Reviewers Are Saying

Guardian

'In this fascinating and elegantly written book ... Farmelo has offered a thoughtful, well-informed reply to those who believe the quest for mathematical beauty has led theoretical physicists into adopting sterile, ultra-mathematical approaches divorced from reality.'
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Wall Street Journal

'Farmelo tells the story of the convergence [of mathematics and physics] with a keen eye for anecdotes, and the excitement of an eye-witness to an intellectual revolution.'
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Prospect

'A bird's-eye view of the panorama of modern physics … as authoritative as it is fascinating'.
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Physics World

'Farmelo is an authoritative, reliable and trusted guide... With a firm hand at the tiller, he cuts through the theoretical murky waters with panache.'
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Times Higher

'Farmelo has succeeded in writing a book for the general reader that gives insights into the motivation behind a theory developed by many of today’s leading thinkers. His book provides as clear an account of the subject as I can imagine for a non-specialist reader.'
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Forbes

'If you like reading about math without having to do math, this is a stellar book.' Ethan Siegel.
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London Mathematical Society

'Graham Farmelo has opened my eyes to the world of theoretical physics … fascinating and thought-provoking' Noel-Ann Bradsaw.
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Nature

'Farmelo leads us through [the brilliant successes of the mathematical approach to physics] adeptly, with a mixture of contemporary accounts and scientific insight.'
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Nature Physics

'Entertaining and written with contagious enthusiasm and could almost be described as a page-turner.'
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Science

'.... an excellent historical section [covers] Newton to the 1970s'
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Irish Times

'Farmelo deftly retraces the growing realisation that maths can unlock understanding of real phenomena … provides a rich history of this interplay, along with a well-informed account of how it has worked in recent decades.'
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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

'Farmelo shows that theoretical physics and pure mathematics thrive best together.'
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CERN courier

'... provides a historical tour de force of the relationship between mathematics and physics, and their tightly correlated evolution'
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Literary Review

'A rich survey of the growing connections between pure mathematics and fundamental physics... Farmelo has worked in some of the world's most prestigious research centres and spoken to many leading theorists... rewarding.'
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Irish Tech Review

'This enjoyable and important book [helps] put together a big picture overview of where we have come from so far, why it took so long for us to progress, and where we might be heading... Read it!'
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de Volkskrant

'The Universe Speaks in Numbers reads like a strong response to the popular pessimism of Sabine Hossenfelder.… The universe simply speaks in numbers and it requires a mathematically trained ear to understand what it is telling us.'
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Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge

'A superbly written, riveting book. In elegant prose, and using virtually no equations, Farmelo describes the ongoing quest of great thinkers to understand the bedrock nature of reality, from the microworld to the cosmos.'
Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton and winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2012

'This masterful book gives us, for the first time, a behind-the-scenes look at how physicists and mathematicians, driven by their pursuit of ultimate Truth, have been drawn into common territory by mysterious intellectual forces seemingly beyond their control. A riveting account of one of the greatest stories of our time.'
Tom Stoppard

'A wonderful book'
Robbert Dijkgraaf

'A masterful exposition of the most productive relationship in all of science—the rich and rewarding interaction between physics and mathematics—with all its historical ups and downs, up to the frontiers of current research.'

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum, London

'Crisply-written, entertaining and extraordinarily well-informed. The most popular and elegant theories of what makes the cosmos tick are becoming harder - even impossible - to test directly but Farmelo argues in this tour de force that they’re still taking us deep into the mathematical heart of reality.'
Jacob Bourjaily, Associate Professor of Physics, Niels Bohr International Academy, Copenhagen University

'Farmelo expertly narrates the history of the dynamic dance between mathematics and theoretical physics, from Newton to Einstein to string theory and beyond. This book will be a must-read for anyone interested in either subject's history or present for many years ahead.'
Jeremy Gray, Emeritus Professor at the Open University and an Honorary Professor in the Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick

'This fascinating, splendidly readable, extensively researched, and remarkably up-to-date book takes readers from the days of Newton to the forefront of modern theoretical physics and shows how current research has reshaped the fields of physics and mathematics to the enrichment of both.'
Thony Christie, Historian of Science and Blogger @rmathematicus

'excellently researched ... and very elegantly written. Despite the density of the material he is dealing with, his prose is light and often witty... I would certainly recommend this book to anybody interested in the developments in modern theoretical physics.'
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Michael Frayn

'I am overcome with admiration for its range and profundity. An amazing achievement.'
Chris Quigg, Fermilab

'Excellent science reading - a coherent and insightful account of the aesthetic science approach to understanding the universe'

What Reviewers Said

Oliver Sachs

'Did Paul Dirac, a supreme theoretical physicist -- the Einstein of quantum mechanics -- have Asperger's syndrome? Certainly he was a very peculiar man, but brilliant and compelling, as Farmelo's wonderful and sensitive portrait brings out.'
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LOUISA GILDER, NYT

‘This biography is a gift. [..] the most satisfying and memorable biography I have read in years.’
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Peter Higgs, Times (UK)

‘Fascinating reading… Graham Farmelo has done a splendid job of portraying Dirac and his world. The biography is a major achievement.’
Daily Telegraph, UK

‘If Newton was the Shakespeare of British physics, Dirac was its Milton, the most fascinating and enigmatic of all our great scientists. And he now has a biography to match his talents: a wonderful book by Graham Farmelo. The story it tells is moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.’
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Brian Cathcart, New Statesman

‘A marvelously rich and intimate study.’
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The Economist

‘[A] sympathetic portrait….Of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionized physics almost a century ago, he truly stands out. Paul Dirac was a strange man in a strange world. This biography, long overdue, is most welcome.’
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Times Higher Education Supplement

‘A page-turner about Dirac and quantum physics seems a contradiction in terms, but Graham Farmelo’s new book, The Strangest Man, is an eminently readable account of the developments in physics throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and the life of one of the discipline’s key scientists.’
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New Scientist

‘Enthralling… Regardless of whether Dirac was autistic or simply unpleasant, he is an icon of modern thought and Farmelo’s book gives us a genuine insight into his life and times.’
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Kirkus

‘Paul Dirac was a giant of 20th-century physics, and this rich, satisfying biography does him justice…. [A] nuanced portrayal of an introverted eccentric who held his own in a small clique of revolutionary scientific geniuses.’
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Chet Raymo, Globe and Mail, Toronto

‘This excellent biography is worthy of its remarkable subject’
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SEED Magazine

‘A tour de force filled with insight and revelation, [offering] an unprecedented and gripping view of Dirac not only as a scientist, but also as a human being.’
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Georgina Ferry, Guardian

‘Graham Farmelo succeeds brilliantly in bringing this shadowy figure into three dimensions’
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Sara Lippincott, Los Angeles Times

‘Graham Farmelo has managed to haul Dirac onstage in an affectionate and meticulously researched book that illuminates both his era and his science’
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What Reviewers are Saying

Lisa Jardine, Financial Times

'A story as gripping as it is elegantly argued ... a wonderful companion piece to one of the most authoritative books on this subject, Richard Rhodes's epic The Making of the Atomic Bomb.'
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Sir Max Hastings, Sunday Times

'[An] excellent book ... Farmelo is a splendid word-portraitist, and his book charts the odysseys, geographical as well as scientific, of the men who played a key role in developing the bomb ... authoritative and superbly readable.'
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Peter Forbes, The Independent

'Graham Farmelo's very fine book ... illuminates the nexus between science, politics, war, and even literature better than anything I have read for some time. The issues it raises are both eternal and especially pressing now. It is not yet Book of the Year time but this has to be a contender.'
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Lawrence Freedman, Foreign Affairs

'In this terrific book, Farmelo ... demonstrates that although principles and evidence often shape the relationship between science and policy, personality and politics play just as large a role.'
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Claire Tomalin

'A remarkable and important book ... Graham Farmelo draws a highly readable and original portrait of Churchill as he dealt in secret with scientists and politicans over the development of nuclear weapons'
Paul Addison, Literary Review

'Superbly written, with a Lindemann-like flair for the translation of scientific data into layman's terms, it is a narrative driven by personalities ... and studded with memorable cameos of the scientists, politicians and bureaucrats involved.'
Nicholas Mancusi, Daily Beast

'This is a complex and engrossing history with obvious geopolitical import, but what's most interesting is the human drama involving Churchill, FDR, and the constellation of scientific egos circling around them. Farmelo also wonderfully draws out Churchill's surprising futurism...'
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Jeremy Bernstein, Wall Street Journal

'The Strangest Man ... is one of the best biographies of a scientist that I know. [Churchill's Bomb], like that one, shows a keen sense of the human comedy. Who were these people, and why did they behave the way they did?'
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Michael Frayn

'A terrific narrative, which casts a new light on Churchill, the Allied atomic bomb project, and the history and aftermath of the Second World War.'
Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph

'Superb ... Few writers can make the mechanics of H-bomb production interesting: Farmelo can. Churchill’s Bomb, equally as good as his award-winning biography of the physicist Paul Dirac ... sheds light on a little-known aspect of Churchill’s life and does so with flair and narrative verve.'
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Piers Brendon, Guardian

In 'this dazzling book' ... 'Farmelo recounts this important story with skill and erudition'.
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Robin McKie, Observer

'Absorbing ... Farmelo's account of Churchill's atomic dreams perfectly captures the essence of the man and of the science of the day.'
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Daniel Johnson, The Times (UK)

'Churchill's Bomb tells [a] dramatic story and tells it brilliantly... Farmelo ingeniously interweaves the narratives of the nuclear scientists, many of them Jewish refugees from Germany, with that of Churchill in war and peace. As the Americans enter the picture the story becomes fiendishly complicated, but the author never loses the thread.'

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Steven Shapin (Harvard University), LRB

'Compelling.... The value of Farmelo's book is in its meticulous attention to the contingencies, accidents, uncertainties, inconsistencies and idiosyncratic personalities in the story of how Britain didn't get the Bomb during the war and how it did get it afterwards. It could all have turned out differently – but it didn't.'
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Hank Cox, Washington Post

'On the eve of World War II, British scientists were well ahead of the United States in the basic research to make a nuclear weapon possible. How the United States wrested that leadership away from Great Britain is the topic of Graham Farmelo's account of a little-known aspect of the war.... [T]his is an interesting story.'
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Antoine Capet, Cercles

'Churchill's Bomb evidently fills an essential gap, and as such will be welcome not only among 'Churchill scholars', but also by a wider readership. … All University libraries should naturally have a copy of this superbly informative monograph, while it would make an excellent present for anyone, young and old, interested in Churchill'
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Gerard DeGroot, Physics World

'Intriguing .... [the book's] brilliance lies in the way the story is told, for it is a tale not just of physics or politics but also, more importantly, of people.'
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Bill Purdue, Times Higher Education

'Splendid and original ... in interweaving the political and scientific, Farmelo succeeds in making the latter beautifully clear even to readers with scant background in the subject.'
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Vin Arthey, The Scotsman

'... a page-turner ... scrupulously researched and superbly written ... Churchill's Bomb is a powerful and moving contribution to literature about the 20th century and to biographical and historical writing...'
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Martin Underwood, IHPST Newsletter, April-May 2014

'A very fine book. ... Graham Farmalo has produced a fine narrative and explains in a clear, lucid manner Churchill's often confused views on The Bomb and possible deployment.'
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Katie Engelhart, Maclean's Magazine

'Farmelo's writing is lyrical - and is chock-full of personality. Readers will delight in ... the tale of Churchill's first meeting with Niels Bohr.'
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Publishers Weekly (US)

'Farmelo ends each chapter with a cliffhanger that will keep readers paging through this thoroughly researched, detailed history of Britain’s involvement with nuclear energy in the WWII era and beyond.... Farmelo’s prose moves quickly with much action .... Highly recommended for those with an interest in weaponry, the WWII era, and British history.'
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Nicholas Sambaluk, U.S. Military Academy, West Point

'A fine work, well presented, cogent and informative'
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Benjamin Wilson, Physics Today

'Entertaining... the real strength of Churchill's Bomb rests with its lively sketches of British nuclear scientists and their world. Farmelo expertly draws their personalities and relationships, and their struggles with the Whitehall bureaucracy.'
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Jason Ridler, Failure Magazine

'Graham Farmelo reconstructs this intense, delicate, and near-Faustian story with wit, detail, and richness...'
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Norman Dombey, Contemporary Physics

'Farmelo ... has written another enthralling book which I think will be of great interest to both historians and physicists'
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Chris Wrigley, Journal of Modern History

'Churchill's Bomb is an outstanding work on international politics and the history of science... It deserves a wide audience.'
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Christopher Coker, TLS

'Graham Farmelo shows ... that Churchill floundered when it actually came to building the Bomb after the USA entered the war...'
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Roger Highfield

'A riveting, powerful and timely reminder that high politics is anything but rational. Graham Farmelo vividly reveals how Winston Churchill learned about atomic physics in the 1920s, warned about the imminence of nuclear weapons in the 30s and yet, paradoxically, squandered Britain's lead in the field during the Second World War.'
Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol

'What a brilliant and compelling book! Graham Farmelo sensitively and eloquently deconstructs the twists and turns of Winston Churchill's involvement with nuclear weapons over nearly half a century, setting this unfamiliar tale in the context of the turbulent times. At its heart are the ambiguities of the World War II relationship between a scientifically innovative but economically weakened Britain and the inexhaustibly energetic USA with unlimited resources.'
James W. Muller, University of Alaska

'An excellent book... Graham Farmelo draws on many sources to show how Churchill, his scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, and a host of other scientists and politicians developed the atomic bomb. Churchill’s Bomb brings these characters back to life with anecdotes, quotations, and personal sketches. But Farmelo's book does more than unfold the hopes, doubts, and fears engendered by the Bomb: it illuminates the relationship between big science and modern democracy.'
Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University

'This is a fascinating book. Graham Farmelo offers a fresh and thoroughly researched history of the development of atomic weapons in his insightful and engaging account of Winston Churchill's failure to forge a partnership of equal exchange between Great Britain and the United States in the development of the bomb. Farmelo offers vivid vignettes of political and scientific personalities, with special attention to the widely disliked Oxford physicist Frederick Lindemann, who became Churchill's science and technology guru in the 1920s.'
Brian Cathcart, author of 'Test of Greatness'

'It has been rightly said that the arrival of nuclear weapons drew a line across history beyond which nothing could be the same again. This readable and ingenious book, by an outstanding historian of science, sheds a brilliant new light on the drawing of that line. The British role has been too long neglected and the Churchillian perspective is fascinating: both are revealed here with all of Farmelo's characteristic rigour and panache.'
Andrew Brown, author of biographies of James Chadwick and Joseph Rotblat

'Churchill's curiosity about science is perhaps the least studied aspect of his character. Graham Farmelo remedies that deficit in masterful style, beginning with Churchill's admiration for H G Wells and ending with a poignant portrait of the elderly statesman brooding over the prospect of nuclear Armageddon.'

The Strangest Man

The hidden life of PAUL DIRAC, quantum genius

'Enthralling' New Scientist

'... gave me the intensest pleasure' @stephenfry

'wonderful and sensitive' Oliver Sacks

LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER 2009

'A major achievement' Peter Higgs
The Times

'Farmelo does Dirac proud' Martin Rees

Churchill's Bomb

a hidden story of science, politics and war

'This terrific book' Lawrence Freedman
Foreign Affairs

'Superbly readable' Max Hastings
Sunday Times

'As good as The Strangest Man' Daily Telegraph

'Superbly informative' Antoine Capet

'Terrific' Michael Frayn

'Remarkable and important' Claire Tomalin

'What a fantastic, compelling book!' Sir Michael Berry

'This dazzling book' Piers Brendon
Guardian

'the best thing I've read this year' Lisa Jardine

'Enthralling' Norman Dombey
Contemporary
Physics

'Entertaining' Physics Today

'Very fine' Peter Forbes
Independent

'Superbly written' Paul Addison
Literary Review

'Engrossing' Nicholas Mancusi
Daily Beast

'Splendid and original' Bill Purdue
THS

'Fresh & compelling ... a page-turner' The Scotsman

'A fine work' Nicholas Sambaluk
West Point