Product Description
In 1920, Albert Einstein wrote to Max Born, "Theoretical physics will flourish wherever you happen to be; there is no other Born to be found in Germany today." The End of the Certain World presents for the first time Born's full story: Nobel physicist, a discoverer of quantum theory, exile from Hitler's Germany, teacher of nine Nobel physicists. Born's role in the "Golden Age of Physics" helped to shape the science of the twentieth century and open the door to the modern era. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, among others, flocked to Gšttingen, Germany in the 1920's to work with Born, the physicist who had discovered one of the most profound principles of the century - the physics of indeterminacy. In a cruel twist of fate Born, a pacifist who loved science for its beauty, had educated these renowned scientists who developed the atom bomb.

Not everyone embraced Born's revolutionary quantum principle. Throughout much of his forty year friendship with Einstein, the two debated the nature of the universe - deterministic versus non-deterministic -with Einstein declaring "God does not play dice", even though the Nobel Committee supported Born's position when they awarded him the 1954 Prize. A social history and a history of science as well as an intimate biography, The End of the Certain World reveals the story of a great physicist and humanitarian and his struggle with the forces of religion, politics, and war during the upheavals of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

a personal, not scientific, biography
This is a very thoroughly researched and beautifully written biography of Max Born the person: son, husband, father, student, teacher, colleague. The author had access to a treasure trove of personal papers and correspondence and has constructed from it a detailed, convincing portrait. Particularly interesting to me is the perspective on what it was like to be Jewish in Germany before and during the awful period of Nazi perversion. Also interesting are the anecdotes regarding other famous and not-so-famous physicists and mathematicians of the era, including Hilbert, Minkowski, Klein, Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Pauli, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, and Fuchs. Born's wife Hedi is also presented in great and sympathetic detail, providing an interesting counterpoint to her husband throughout the book.

Born's scientific accomplishments are also described, but not in a way which adequately conveys their significance or meaning. Unless the reader already possesses some familiarity with quantum mechanics, she will probably not understand why Born was an important figure in the history of physics. Even so, if she is interested in history, she will probably find this book a fascinating depiction of the era as it was experienced by an upper-middle-class family who considered themselves German first and Jewish a distant second.

Fascinating though disjointed biography
I received this as a gift from someone who knew I read a lot of books about J.R. Oppenheimer, who was one of Born's doctoral students.It's a fascinating biography about a fascinating man.I agree with many comments that came before and will add my own observations:
1) I'm not a physicist (though I am a scientist), yet I found the physics in the book lacking compared to treatments in other books I read (say, books by Richard Rhodes, Davis' biography "Lawrence and Oppenheimer," etc).Even the description of what made the quantum revolution a revolution is fairly hidden because of the inadequate description of the physics.
2) The author tells us about Hedi Born's "hothouse" upbringing and expectations, alluding to this as an important dynamic in the marriage.Pages and pages go by before it's brought up again, when Hedi has an affair with a colleague of Born's.What her "hothouse" upbringing had to do with the affair is not really explained.
3) The author also casually drops the bombshell that Born converted to Lutheranism to please his mother-in-law.This seems so out of character for the Born Greenspan depicted: non-religious but proudly Jewish.
4) The author mentioned that Born didn't get along with his mother-in-law, then when she died, it was devastating to him.A contradiction that's not resolved satisfactorily.
5) From the bibliography, it appears the author is fluent in German, yet many German terms are used without translation (Sutterlin script, eg). The appearance of German words (not italicized!) in English sentences is a bit odd; she should have used the entire phrase and then supplied the translation.It would give the book more flavor to do this.

The Certain End of His World
If anyone more prototypically German in character than Max Born ever lived, I'd be interested in meeting him. Born incarnated all the best in German history, all the virtues of German culture, and yet that same German culture did its utmost to destroy him. Inevitably, this biography of Max Born is also a "biography" of Germany in the first half of the 20th Century, and of the Nazi sociopathy that created the Shoah.

History, not science, is the metier of "The End of the Certain World." Those lucky few readers who fully understand relativity and quantum physics will be able to grapple with Born's contributions to science and to judge his centrality, but such an understanding is not at all required to grapple with the biographical portrait of the man and his many scientific colleagues and rivals. Author Nancy Greenspan makes no effort to explain quantum physics per se; I doubt that she would be qualified to do so. Instead she portrays the dynamics of Born's career as a scientist, in terms of his working relationships with other physicists and academic institutions. Of course, the cast of physicists in this drama includes virtually every great name of the century - Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Dirac, Einstein, inter alia - and each of them emerges as a specific human being, some admirable, some hateful, in Greenspan's smooth, detailed narrative. Born's marriage and the fitful course thereof constitute a parallel 'novel' to his scientific career, and a precise counterpoint to the larger narrative of Jewish assimilation and European anti-Semitism.

Of particular emotional interest was the story of Born's efforts to rescue Jewish scientists as well as his own extended family members from the certain fate that awaited them in Nazi Germany. Born was not alone in that effort; in fact, he was a beneficiary of such an effort by others, including some of his own previous students. What is particularly painful to read about is the indifference and even hostility toward the plight of Jews of Germany. Born found that 'everybody' knew what was likely to be happening, but few cared enough to intervene. Physicists, in fact, fared better than most. Jewish musicians, for example, were jealously excluded from any opportunities to migrate to England because English musicians feared the competition.

During his years in England and Scotland, first as a refugee and later as a naturalized citizen, Born strayed occasionally over the edges of political activism but quickly withdrew to the sanity of science. Politically, he was hardly more than a Labor party voter, yet he and other "German" scientists were routinely suspected of disloyalty, sometimes because of attachment to Germany! and sometimes because it was widely assumed that they were inherently Russian communist-sympathizers. The lunatic actions of Klaus Fuchs gave that attitude an unfortunate plausibility. As for Max Born, he remained from his earliest statements to his last profoundly anti-ideological; he declared himself "skeptical with regards to economic beliefs...not..based on ethical principles." In Scotland, when he was denounced as a probable communist, he stated that he was "not a socialist, as you seem to think, if this expression means blind belief in Marxist theories." Dialectical materialism, he said, was "rubbish." Author Greenspan summarizes her undertanding of his position:

...with the "western system of profit and vested interests," squalor and poverty existed for the masses and luxury for the few. The capitalists system - the unethical drive for profit - had supported the military buildups in Germany and Japan. Born wanted to temper the "ethical inferiority of the profit system" by merging the efficiency of free-market production with a regard for workers' rights.

In Born's later years, in safer but no more economically secure straits, he became conscientiously concerned with the social/historical effects of his own and others' science, and devoted much of his time and prestige to formulating a scientific community commitment to resisting militaristic misuse of knowledge. He was an active backer and signatory of the two major proposals for nuclear disarmament of the 1950s.

The stimulus that sent Nancy Greenspan into years of research about Born - reading his letters and his wife's sprawling diaries, scoring national archives, learning enough physics and math to write such a book comfortably - was oddly personal, all based on a friendship with Born's grand-daughter, who introduced her casually to surviving members of the Born family. Here's a riddle: what well-known 'British' singer/actress is the grand-daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist?

Altogether, this is a vivid old-fashioned biography, well worth reading for its historical significance, but fundamentally a full-length portrait of an exceptional human being, virtues and flaws included. I finished the book thinking 'hey, Max Born was a great guy,' and 'oy, what he had to live through!'

A great effort for a well deserved physicist
Well done to Nancy Greenspan for this book.
Max Born was a jewish scientist who was expelled from his job at a German university when World War 2 broke out. A friend of Albert Einstein's, he like many, fled from the NAZIs and headed west.
This book gives a sound and very readable account of his life. It's well written and interesting and I certainly appreciate the writer's efforts as I value such a biography on the life of any scientist.
I also have two books actually written by Born, one of which is "The Restless Universe" and is a delightful script on concepts of Physics. It shows a super sharp mind of Max Born. Though he was quite a heavyweight in Atomic Physics it seems he was always underated. Hopefully this work will set the record straight.

A magnificent biography that links Born's science with his personal life...
I've been reading steadily about the physicists from the same time period as Einstein up through and including oppenheimer and Feynman. My training in science is mostly neuroscience and cell biology, but I've been teaching a lot of chemistry lately at the local community college. This means I have to teach about the atom and what is now known about electrons and basic atomic theory. I've always been very curious about physics, especially physics that deal with atomic particles and light. Einstein has always been one of my favorite people to read about and quote, so it was natural to me to start reading about the people he came across, and those who helped build on his work through work of their own. Besides, it has always driven me batty trying to separate all the names and the countries of these guys. So many were German, and if they were not German, they went to German schools of physics for their training, or were deeply involved with the German school of physics. I was always getting Born and Bohr mixed up...so I decided the more I knew about these guys the better able to explain their work.

This book is first rate. I cannot comment on the accuracy of the physics, but there are many physics concepts that Greenspan elucidated because they were Born's ideas or discoveries, and from reading this book, I certainly understand these ideas much better than I did before. Just as in reading David McCullough's books on John Adams, where you cannot separate the man from his political beliefs about individual freedom, neither should you read a book about a man such as Born and expect to get through without being introduced to the work of his lifetime, which was explaining and proving parts of atomic theory through mathematics. I enjoy reading the science, even if I have to go back and read it more than once to gain an understanding of it. Even more thrilling is reading the work of these men and being able to better explain these concepts in my classes.

I admire greatly theoretical physicists and mathematicians, even if I am incapable of doing this work myself. As Einstein once stated, he wanted to know these things because he could better understand the 'work of God.' I find that the more I read from the physicists of this period of time, the more I understand. It's difficult to fathom so many great men (and a few women) who lived at one time period and worked together to bring the world to an understanding of physics as we know it. It makes you wonder why we have no outstanding physicists now (except for Stephen Hawkings) and it makes me wonder how limiting our education is, that not only the U.S. but Europe and Asia seem not to be able to produce the great men that we saw so many of during the first 50 years of atomic physics (say from 1890 to 1950). What happened, and where have all these magnificent minds gone? Why can we not produce men and women like this now...these are the questions that educators should be asking themselves.

Born's life with his family and friends, the escape from a rabidly anti-Semitic Germany, the life spent in Scotland, all of which were entwined with his work is absolutely fascinating. Greenspan did a beautiful job not only of research but of editing, and placing in her book, the important letters and research. I've only seen biographies like this from one other person, and he dealt with the great men from the Revolutionary time period in America. This is definitely a book worth buying and reading, and one that I recommend highly to my students and those interested in this time period. Warning to readers, this is a heavy duty book, and not one to be undertaken lightly!

Karen Sadler ... Read more

Product Description
CHAPTER I GEOMETRY AXD COSMOLOGY 1. THE ORIGIN OF THE ART OF ~IEASl"RIXG SPACE AXD TBIE T HE physical problem presented by space and time is nothing more than the familiar task of fi.'cing numerically a place and a point of time for every physical event, thus enabling us to single it out, as it were, from the chaos of the co-existence and succession of things. The first problem of ~Ian was to find his way about on the earth. Hence the art of measuring the earth (geodesy) became the source of the doctrine of space, which deri"ed its name " geometry" from the Greek word for earth. From the very outset, however, the measure of time arose from the regular change of night and day, of the phases of the moon and of the seasons. These phenomena forced themselves on ~Ian's attention and first moved him to direct his gaze to the stars, which were the source of the doctrine of the universe, cosmology. Astronomic science applied the teachings of geometry that had been

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Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at http://www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

a fake book
we have already been cheated by one of Amazon sellers from whom we bought the same book in july but only received in China last week. So anybody what we should do to get the money back from amazon organization as soon as possible because we cannot sell back a book to others. The bookis not useful to the reader and so cannot be sold to any body. It can only be given back to the seller and get money and excuses immediately. The book is a photo-copy from a computer trype book, that is without spacings between chapters, without figures and with a lot of misprints.

book name: Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Max Born
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
And it cost more than $20!

Warning: January 2010 printing defective
Warning: the January 2010 printing is not a book: it's just unformatted text printed with no diagrams.It's completely worthless.

The actual book is pretty good.I lent my copy to a friend, and never got it back.I wanted a copy for reference, so I tried to order it here.But what I got is bound pages of worthless computer printout.

might work well for some readers; out of date and overpriced
Born wrote the original version of this book in 1920, and although it was updated for the 1962 edition, essentially what you're getting here is a view of relativity from 90 years ago. I certainly wouldn't suggest paying $20 for this version, which is simply a reprint of the 1962 version. Instead, pick up the 1962 version used for a third the price.

Born states in his preface that he wanted to write a book that would occupy a middle ground between highly mathematical treatments and popularizations that "give only descriptions of the facts and ideas in ordinary language or in philosophical terms--a way in which, I fear, only a very superficial acquaintance with relativity can be obtained." That is pretty much what he achieved. If you read this book from cover to cover and understand it, you will understand a heck of a lot of relativity. But in order to accomplish that, you will have to wade through a lot of plodding Victorian prose, and lots and lots of diagrams and equations.

What you will *not* find here is anything from the last five centuries. You will not hear about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar; or Brans-Dicke gravity as a vehicle for subjecting Mach's principle to empirical tests; or supermassive black holes; or modern high-precision cosmology; or black hole thermodynamics; or the golden age of empirical tests of general relativity that began in the 1970's. In fact, you will not even find terms like "black hole" in the index, since that term wasn't even coined until 1967.

I would suggest that most readers in the potential audience of this book try Martin Gardner's Relativity Simply Explained instead. Although Gardner's book is out of date, it is much less out of date than this one.

Excellent history, difficult introduction
This should not be the first book you read about Relativity. First, the history section, more than half the book, provides much more detail than you need. Second, the derivation of the Lorentz transformation using Minkowski diagrams is exceedingly complicated.Born tried introducing these diagrams early on in order to give you more insight.Its an interesting approach but I think it is much easier to learn the Lorentz transformation using a more direct route first.Then reading Born's method as a second book can give you a better understanding of the diagrams.(I recommend The Feyman Lectures Volume 1 as the best introduction to Special Relativity. For General Relativity, the book by Jean Eisenstaedt is very good.)

If you are interested in the history of science then this book provides a wealth of unique information. The detail on the the many different theories of the Aether that preceded Relativity exceeds any other book I have read. He gives you considerable insight into their rational and positive aspects. For example the dual fluid theory of electricity led naturally to the polarization of molecules as an explanation of dielectric behavior.

The thoroughness of this book is remarkable given when the first edition was written (around 1920.)It certainly was the best book of its kind for several decades and remains an excellent book to read once you understand the basics.

Not for beginners
Max Born was a great physicist who proposed a deeper meaning for quantum mechanics and received the Nobel Prize for his efforts.He was also a friend of Einstein's and therefore was in a great position to write about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.With all this going for it, I was expecting to like this book much more that I did.This is not to say that I did not like the book, only that I do not feel that the book was what I expected it to be.I write this review to alert a potential reader as to exactly what they will be getting, so that they are not surprised and possibly disappointed.

The first two thirds of the book are devoted to providing the necessary background for the subsequent discussion of the Theory of Relativity.I found this part of the book fascinating and useful, in and of itself, but please note; the book was originally written in German and uses German notation, i.e., K for force, b for acceleration, etc., which can be a bit annoying for a reader used to English conventions.It also uses the cgs system of notation instead of SI notation, again an annoyance, but not a very difficult hurdle to overcome.Of more importance is the fact that the book does not use any calculus, which is both good and bad.Without the simplification of calculus the development of mechanics is quite labored and more complicated than it is when calculus is employed.This is, however, not an entirely bad thing as it shows how Newton developed mechanics.Along the way you see differential calculus developing out of simple geometric arguments.(While he had developed a form of calculus, Newton did not use it in developing mechanics in the Principia.He used geometrical arguments of the sort used here, so one gets a feeling for how mechanics developed.)Born also provides information that is generally not available elsewhere.For instance, he shows exactly how Romer, with remarkable accuracy, calculated the velocity of light in 1676.Most other books only state that this was done or give a mostly useless general description of what he did.Born shows exactly what he did and runs through the calculation.Another subject that is generally overlooked is Ether Theory.Before reading this book I had the impression that Ether Theory was a general, but not very specific or accurate, theory to explain the propagation of light.Born shows that, far from being general or non-specific, Ether Theory was very developed and, within the experimental accuracy of the time, explained the existing data.This is important background that is necessary to understand the importance of Relativity Theory.

The last third of the book actually deals with the title subject,and is the reason why people read this book.Unfortunately, this was the part of the book that I liked least.This discussion of Relativity Theory provided in this book is not for beginners.The book jumps right in and uses the Minkowsky space/time formulation of Special Relativity, which evolves largely into an exercise in the rotational transformation of rectilinear motion in inertial systems.(If this scares you off, this is not the book for you.)

Einstein once said that any theory should be explainable to a barmaid.To understand this analysis of his theory I am afraid that the barmaid in question should be a college student, majoring in physics or mathematics.If you want an easier and more straightforward presentation, one should read Einstein's own book `Relativity" or Martin Gardner's "Relativity Simply Explained".Einstein did not use this space/time analysis to derive Special Relativity.Indeed, Minkowsky developed it to put Einstein's theory on a firmer mathematical basis.Initially, Einstein did not even like this approach as he felt it unnecessarily complex.It was only much later, when he was developing General Relativity, that he realized the utility of using space/time coordinates.

The approach to relativity given in this book is better suited to one who already understands the basic idea and wants a more mathematical foundation.As such, it is better suited to a college physics student than one who just wants a basic understanding of the subject.This is not to say that an advanced high school student could not get a lot from this book.No advanced math is used and most of the arguments are geometrical, so no advanced training is required.It is just that there are much simpler ways (such as that actually used by Einstein) to derive the expressions of Special Relativity than the ones used in this book.

The last section of the book deals with gravity and General Relativity.Since the mathematics of General Relativity is well beyond the scope of the book, Born opts for a non-rigorous approach: one that I found more satisfying than the somewhat rigorous approach he used for Special Relativity.There is a nice discussion of the tests for General Relativity and a very brief discussion of the calculation of the bending of light as determined by Newton's gravitational approach.Most people do not even realize that Newtonian mechanics predicts that starlight is bent by the gravitation of the sun, but that this effect is half as great as that predicted by General Relativity. (This classical calculation assumes that light has mass, the magnitude of which is unimportant because this mass term cancels out.However, the math only makes sense if the mass is not zero, which is only true when one considers relativity theory.Special relativity gives light a mass, but for euclidean space there is no deflection.The deflection only comes in when the non-euclidean space of General Relativity is considered.)Regardless of the validity of this classical calculation, the important point is that General Relativity correctly predicted the amount of the deflection.

The last ten pages of the book are devoted to the cosmological implications of General Relativity.While this section, updated in 1962, is completely out of date, it is nonetheless interesting.It provides a snapshot of cosmology before the measurements of the background temperature of the universe provided experimental support for the Big Bang Theory over its rival Steady State Theory.

Once again - a good book for advanced "students", but much less so for beginners.
... Read more

Product Description
The year is 1971.With mounting casualties and a rising anti-war sentiment, America's time in Vietnam is coming to a close.Yet in the isolated Valley Forge Firebase on the Cambodian border, Captain Frank Castle is one of the few soldiers still committed to the fight against the enemy.With dwindling reserves, Castle must stand against an impending Viet Cong attack that threatens to wipe out the entire American platoon.To survive the battle, what grim decision must he make that will forever alter the course of his life?In this acclaimed tale, superstar Garth Ennis reveals the never-before-told story of the horrors Castle was forced to face to come home fromVietnam alive, ending in a shocking twist that will forever change how readers see Marvel Comics' most famous urban vigilante. Collecting BORN #1-4. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

better than i thought
really, really good.Ennis knows the punisher.must read for any punisher fan.

book
Good, but graphic book. Arrived in described condition and a timely manner. Very pleased. Thank you!

unexceptional, but worth it
boring!garth, baby, you're not grabbing my attention.i get it: frank castle is a hardass.and your artist is functional, but not exceptional, not that you necessarily care here.

but hey, credit where credit is due.if nothing else, it's a good little book, and it's got your familiar aura.cool.it's just not exceptional, and considering its rarity, i can't help but feel a little ripped off.

i feel like you're repeating yourself a lot lately, ennis.

A Glimpse into the Punisher!
Before he became the vigilante called the Punisher, he was a marine in Vietnam.To me, it gave a glimpse into a man that seems he's always needed a war.It spoke of the idea that the Punisher isn't who he is b/c of the deaths of his family, that was simply the catalyst that invoked his wrath to the criminal element.It's almost as if his fate was sealed; that he was brought into this world to fight and exact vengeance.

I've read this book countless times and I never tire of it.The storyline is quite good, and the superb artwork has that gritty feel to it that I believe suited the story quite well.I highly recommend this book.

Frank Castle is the Viet Congs worst enemy.
I loved this story because it technically isn't a 'Birth of the Punisher' story. It tells the story of the evil & death that Frank Castle has alwayhs carried with him. An excellent story. ... Read more

Product Description
Principles of Optics is one of the classic science books of the twentieth century, and probably the most influential book in optics published in the past forty years. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with new material covering the CAT scan, interference with broad-band light and the so-called Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction theory. This edition also details scattering from inhomogeneous media and presents an account of the principles of diffraction tomography to which Emil Wolf has made a basic contribution. Several new appendices are also included. This new edition will be invaluable to advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in most areas of optics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Need modernising
Yes - all classical (linear) optical concepts are in here, and yes, it's the 'bible', but it's very dated in its content, style and references, generally, and not very practical to use.

I wish Hecht - or someone like him - would re-write this classic as a more advanced version of his book.

The Bible

Amazing book. It's the bible of geometric optics. Have everything you might need.

Needs a little previous knowledge, but which book doesn't?

A Classic in the Science of Optics
I read this book in the late sixties, when some of my fellow engineers built and tested an acoustic lens for a developmental company. Born & Wolf were well-acquainted with antenna aperture theory, and were among the first to write that the human eye could resolve 5X better than aperture theory would predict. This they credited to involuntary eye movements called flicks and saccades, which when combined with the brain's ability to do signal processing, was able to produce much better resolution than would have been predicted by the diameter of the retinal rods. In many ways the book gives testimony to God's wonderful gift of vision with color, depth, clarity, and order.

Good book
It is just a rare book on physical optics based on Maxwell equations. Rarely a book states the assumptions,the validity of the equations, the principles and how the equations arrived. Certainly, it is a great book for postgraduates and researchers in physical optics not so for undergraduate students who don't want to go through all the mathematics.

A Classic
This book is a classic with all problems associated. Half of the reference quoted have been written before the WWII. Very useful if you like to quote original papers. This book cover most topics of the classical optics but hardy cover modern topics.

However, it is hard to read and use a weird notation. Certainly not useful for rapid referencing. Like the bible, use it only when you have serious problem to deal with. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Straight from the horse's mouth
Max Born was one of the prime movers in the development of quantum mechanics. He also produced several books for a general audience, and this is one of them. It was written in 1936, with a postscript chapter that tries to bring things a bit more up to date (at least to 1951 when this Dover edition was first published). One of the most interesting features of this book is the inclusion of seven "flip books", which are included in the margins of most pages.By flipping the pages one can see the motion of atoms, operation of a Hertzian oscillator, the scattering of a particles, the motion of electrons in H atoms, and the rotation of orbital planes.

The book begins with the kinetic theory of gases and uses this to develop the general concepts of Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics.This treatment is devoid of mathematics and is a great introduction to physics, written for a general audiences, but with insights that physicists may also find interesting.It is suitable for high school students and non-science major college students. The book then proceeds to two chapters that cover electrons and ions, and waves and particles.These chapters cover the fundamentals of relativity theory and quantum mechanics.Again the treatment here is quite general and non-mathematical.These sections are still quite relevant even after 70 years, but after these chapters the book starts to show its age.

The final two chapters of the book deal with the structure of the atom and nuclear physics (circa 1936).The structure of the atom chapter gives a very nice overview of the development of the Bohr atom, with the modifications made by Sommerfeld, Pauli and Dirac.It covers the development of quantum numbers, electron orbits, and how this explains the observed atomic spectra.This chapter is probably of more interest to physicists than for a general audience, but it is explained well and is not too complex, so someone without a physics background should not become completely lost.The final chapter covers nuclear physics, primarily isotopes.Nuclear physics has advanced so much since 1951 that this chapter is mostly only of historical interest.After the material covered in the original 1936 book there is a brief postscript chapter trying to bring things up to 1951.This chapter is very general, and while it briefly mentions some advances in quantum electro dynamics, these references are very general and are mostly of historical interest.The rest of this postscript is really just historical, dealing with topics such as the impact of science on WWII (mostly the atomic bomb, but since the author was not actually involved with this work it is extremely general and very superficial).

This is a great book for a high school student interested in science. Those interested in the history of science and old science books will also like this book as it is a classic, written by a master.

Max Born's Restless Universe
A classic Dover edition that uses page margins to create flip books of physical phenomena like kinetic theory of gases.

After another classic (The Mechanical Universe) that used animations (by James Blinn of NASA), physics is much better understood.But Born did this back in 1936.Good show, Max! ... Read more

Product Description
This classic book is a gathering of letters between the two Nobel-prize winning physicists Albert Einstein and Max Born. For the forty years of their friendship, Einstein and Born wrote to each other regularly, discussing their views and feelings on the world wars, quantum theory, music, their families, the tragic plight of Europe's Jewry, and their own roles in the tumultuous politics of the time. Fascinating historically, The Born-Einstein Letters is also highly topical: scientists continue to struggle with quantum physics, their role in wartime, and the public's misunderstanding. Now reissued for "The Year of Physics," commemorating the centennial of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, the book will include a new preface by Kip Thorne and Diana Buchwald.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A vivid account of XXthcentury history and science
This book is the history of a lifelong frienship between two great scientists, but is much more than this as it covers perhaps the most dramatic period of the history of humanity. Their lives were conditioned by the two world wars which originated the scene in which we all live now in XXI century.

A peculiar glimpse into the relationship of two physicists
Take a great mathematician, add to it the talent of a philosopher, the mindfulness of a Buddhist monk and the intuition of a gifted doctor and you get a world's greatest physicist. This book is a peculiar glimpse into the relationship of two accomplished physicists. The letters touch up on a number of scientific, humanitarian, and political issues. Enlightening account of two intelligent people dealing with the inevitable intellectual and personal differences within the context of their freindship. A fascinating account of Einstein's state of mind during his last days and his general attitude towards dying at the end of the book. The translations are done in questionable English but it only adds to the charms. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Revealing the Human Side of Two Brilliant Scientists!!
+++++

The highlight of this book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born (1882 to 1970) is the letters he and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955) exchanged between the years 1916 and 1955.These letters (that were never meant to be published) show the human side of these brilliant physicists.

This book has an overall introduction broken up into seven sections:

(1) Note on this new edition by Gustav Born (one of Max Born's sons).
(2) Acknowledgements for this new edition again by Gustav.
(3) A Modern Preface to this new edition by historian Diana Buchwald and physicist Kip Thorne.
(4) Forward to the original edition by Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell.
(5) Introduction to the original edition by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg.
(6) Acknowledgements to the original edition by Max Born.
(7) A kind of Preamble to the letters again by Max.

Then we come to:

(8) "The Born-Einstein Letters"
(9) "Index"

I recommend reading the seven sections of the overall introduction first before reading the actual letters themselves.

Special mention should be given to the Modern Preface (written in Sept. 2004) to this new edition.This section is very thorough (it has more than 60 footnotes) explaining everything you need to know about the letters themselves.

The "Born-Einstein Letters" themselves are numbered for easy reference.The first letter is dated (Feb. 27, 1916) while the last is dated (Jan. 29, 1955).There are commentaries, explanations, and autobiographical remarks by Born accompanying almost every letter. As the modern preface says:

"These commentaries are striking in their candor, in their admiration for Einstein and the apparent need for Born to comprehend and explain some of the major disagreements with Einstein over the years."

This collection of 120 translated letters itself can be broken down as follows:

(i) 39 letters from Einstein to Born
(ii) 7 from Einstein to (Born and his wife Hedwig nicknamed "Hedi")
(iii) 17 letters between Einstein and Hedi
(iv) 48 from Born to Einstein
(v) 3 from (Born and Hedi) to Einstein
(vi) 1 from Born to Einstein's second wife
(vii) 1 in each direction between Einstein and Born and Max's friend, the physicist James Franck
(viii) 3 from Wolfgang Pauli, a theoretical physicist, to Born

As the modern preface says:

"The letters themselves constitute one of the most vivid and valuable testimonies in the development of modern science.They also tell us much about the personal hardships that Einstein and Born overcame during two world wars, the vagaries of academic life, the daily grind of administrative work, and the steadfastness and frailty of human relationships.Throughout runs a scientific dialogue that was central to their lives...

[Most of these letters] attest to the close, lively, and at times turbulent relationship among [Born, Hedi, and Einstein].Esteem, affection, and occasional criticism from the Borns is countered by warmth from Einstein with occasional flirtatiousness toward Hedi and at times defensive, even wounded humor...

Born included [the 3 letters from Pauli (as indicated in viii above)] as they illuminate a misunderstanding between himself and Einstein about quantum mechanics...

The frequency, topics, and tone of the letters...reflect the initial closeness, and cooling and final rapprochement between Einstein and Born.Between 1916 and 1920 both wrote to each other eagerly.After Einstein's rise to national and international fame, they exchanged less than four letters per year on average, until the final year and a half of Einstein's life, when the early warmth returned and their correspondence regained its original intensity."

The themes in these letters and Born's commentaries impart an "impressive tapestry."Some include those of a personal nature such as Einstein's philosophy of life; his relaxed attitude towards mistakes in his scientific work; and Born's disappointment over the poor early recognition of his contributions to quantum theory.Larger social and political themes include Communism; Zionism; Born's and Einstein's extensive efforts to help Jewish scientists in the wake of Hitler's rise to power; the Holocaust; the atomic bomb; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the evolution of Germany after World War Two.

In these letters we meet a large number of distinguished scientists of the era.We also see the extensive range of scientific issues that occupied Born and Einstein during their careers.

A highlight of this book (for me, at least) is the historical 1927 black and white photo of almost 30 distinguished scientists (all men except one woman) of that time.Born and Einstein are highlighted in this photo.

Don't worry!You don't have to know any science to read this book.You can simply skip those science parts you don't understand.However, knowing some science or having access to a good science dictionary would be beneficial.

Finally, there were two problems I found with this book:

First, there is no table of contents.I thought this odd since the book is so well organized.Instead there is only a title page that only lists (without giving page numbers) 5 of the 9 sections indicated above.For a book of such important historical and scientific historical magnitude, I thought this was a major oversight.

Secondly, the index is only a name index.There is no subject index.Why?There is an impressive array of topics covered in these historical letters (some of which I touched on above).Thus, I think a subject index should have been mandatory.

In conclusion, this is a unique book that includes the actual letters between Albert Einstein and Max Born.Be sure to read this book and see why Born said, "With [Einstein's] death, we, my wife and I, lost our dearest friend."

(first published in English 1971;this edition published 2005;overall introduction of 7 sections;120 letters with commentaries;overall introduction and letters comprise 270 pages;name index)

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Customer Reviews (2)

A Classic by one of the Pioneer's of Quantum Theory
A very enjoyable read, providing a unique perspective on the early days of QT.

A unique view of the operator formalism of Quantum Mechanics
There are two series of lectures in this book: one on crystal lattices and one on quantum mechanics. The crystal-lattice work is of no great interest these days, but the lectures on QM were written just after Born worked with Heisenberg et al. to develop the operator formalism, and shows a unique angle on it. For example, he motivates the need for matrix multiplication by discussing the representation of physical variables in terms of Fourier transform, but where the frequencies are not harmonics of a fundamental frequency, but are instead the differences between energy levels. It's a very different angle from the way it is introduced in text books, and quite fascinating if you're interested in the conceptual development of QM. ... Read more

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At the time of its publication this classic text, co-written by the Nobel Laureate Max Born, represented the definitive account of the subject and in many ways it still does. The book begins with a general discussion of the statistical mechanics of ideal lattices, leading to the electric polarizability and to the scattering of light. It then provides detailed discussions of long lattice waves, thermal properties, and optical properties. ... Read more

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THE ORIGIN OF THE BORN-OPPENHEIMER APPROACH
This is not only the first, but still one of the best, explicit formulation of the Born-Oppenheimer approach, which stands as the basis for most of the quantum chemistry. ... Read more

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The articles in this book reflect the omnipresence of diffusion processes in the natural sciences. They describe experimental results as well as theoretical models and computer simulations, and address a wide readership including graduate students. The problems treated stem from physics, astronomy, physical chemistry, biology, and medicine. The papers are presented in a tutorial style and reflect the present-day trends in the field. ... Read more

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A wonderful collection of letters sent to Max Born including papers from the great physisists of the 20th century. ... Read more

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Proceedings of the 14th Max Born Symposium on Theoretical Physics, New Symmetries and Integrable Models. This symposium deals with the new results in supersymmetry, sypersymmetric field in particular, as well as theoretical models, the formalism of quantum groups and quantum deformations, and other new ideas. ... Read more

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This collection of articles gives a nice overview of the fast growing field of diffusion and transport. The area of non-Browman statistical mechanics has many extensions into other fields like biology, ecology, geophysics etc. These tutorial lectures address e.g. Lévy flights and walks, diffusion on metal surfaces or in superconductors, classical diffusion, biased and anomalous diffusion, chemical reaction diffusion, aging in glassy systems, diffusion in soft matter and in nonsymmetric potentials, and also new problems like diffusive processes in econophysics and in biology. ... Read more

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This volume presents detailed discussions of a number of unsolved conceptual and technical issues arising, in particular, in the foundations of quantum theory and the philosophy of science. The 14 contributions capture a wide variety of viewpoints and backgrounds. Some chapters deal primarily with the main experimental issues; others focus on theoretical and philosophical questions. In addition, attempts are made to systematically analyze ways in which quantum physics can be connected to the neurosciences and consciousness research. ... Read more