Big Bang by Simon Singh
I just finished Big Bang; The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh. As with Singh’s books on crypto and Fermat’s Last Theorem this is just about as good as science writing for a general audience gets. Singh is British and assumes that an intelligent reader can handle a fair amount of real physics (he himself has a Ph.D. in physics) and does not try to spice things up with an excessive focus on the personalities of the scientists (most of whom don’t actually have much personality, of course, or none that would be recognized by Paris Hilton).
One of the interesting tidbits in the book for me was about Ralph Alpher, who provided the mathematical and theoretical basis for the Big Bang theory, notably for the formation of hydrogen and helium out of a soup of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
“Alpher’s academic career had started promisingly in 1937, when, as a sixteen-year-old prodigy, he received a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unfortunately, while chatting to one of the institute’s alumni, he casually mentioned that his family was Jewish — and the scholarship was promptly withdrawn. … The only way that Alpher could get back on the academic track was by holding down a day job and attending evening classes at George Washington University, where he eventually completed his bachelor’s degree.”
Back in 1978 I was holding down a day job (Fortran programming for some scientists; a job that is probably still available today!) and attending G.W.U. at night. Then in 1979 I transferred to M.I.T., precisely the reverse of Alpher’s path.
[Due to a lack of good experimental data, e.g., an observation of the cosmic microwave background radiation predicted by Alpher and his collaborators Gamow and Herman, their Big Bang theory was ignored and all three guys abandoned cosmology. Alpher went to work at G.E. and Herman went to work at G.M. Gamow was a tenured professor at G.W.U. and drifted into seemingly more promising areas.]
Another fun part of the book is the recounting of Pope Pius XII’s 1951 endorsement of the Big Bang theory against the Steady State model, many decades ahead of the average physicist.
I finished the book at the Beluga Lake Lodge in Homer, Alaska while Jewel’s brother Nikos was setting up to play some of his songs. The weather here seems to be reliably sunny and 65-70 degrees. Almost everyone in Homer has a beautiful view to the south across Kachemak Bay and to a range of mountains that climb to about 7000′ high and are dotted with snow and glaciers.
