appallingly gushing and fawning, August 28, 2006
By lector avidus (USA) - See all my reviews

I confess that I only read two chapters of this book before I decided that it was all that I could take.

Yes, Princeton's IAS was a place where extremely talented scientists congregated. All the same, what I read of this book was almost pathetic in the degree that the author doesn't as much describe the scientists there as people, as make them out to be a variety of superheros who must be described in adulatory, even groveling terms, an insult to their memories. Nor did I learn anything new - either in terms of science or biography - from the chapters I read; even worse, it was clear to me which books some, if not many, of the passages came from.

I wouldn't recommend this book.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Very entertaining history, June 5, 2003
By magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews


I'm surprised I didn't know about this book sooner. It was published in 1988 and definitely deserves to be better known.
This is one of the more enjoyable books on the history of science I've read. It details the history of the Princeton Institute for Advanced study through the lives and careers of some of its most famous scions. There are chapters on Einstein, Kurt Goedel, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann (the inventer of the electronic computer), and Ed Witten, the author of the string theory, and many others.

The book is full of amusing and fascinating details and stories about the many famous and often eccentric scientists and mathematicians who worked in its cloistered halls. For example, referring to Einstein's eventual obsession about disproving the uncertainty aspect of quantum mechanics, Oppenheimer once said, "Einstein is cuckoo." Oppenheimer once learned Greek so that he could read classic literature in the original. Upon learning that several of his fellow scientists were meeting to discuss Italian literature, he learned enough of it in a month to start reading the books. Godel developed a paranoid delusion and spent his last months refusing any food, eventually starving himself to death, having become convinced that his doctors were trying to poison him.

Before Einstein came to the U.S., there was a movement in Germany against "Jewish physics." One hundred supposed scientists joined this group and once held an anti-Einstein meeting at a large auditorium, with thousands of people in attendence. Einstein himself went to the event just to see what the whole thing was about, and finding out of course that their objections were nonsense and "absurd," as Einstein said. But it was at that point that Einstein finally decided things were getting a little too overheated in the Fatherland and he finally left for the states--their loss and our gain.

Another funny thing about Einstein was just how crazy the public went over him. They named everything from their children to their boats after him. One time Einstein visited the famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane in England, and his daughter fainted dead away at the sight of him.

The public may not have really understood much about Einstein's new ideas--light having weight, space actually being curved, and so on--but all that mattered was that Einstein understood it. He was the prophet of a new world order and would revolutionize our understanding of reality with his unique genius, and the public was practically giddy as a schoolgirl about Einstein as a result.

There are many other interesting and funny stories about the lives of these emminent thinkers in the book, but I'll leave the rest for you to read for yourself. This book is definitely worth your time and money.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating story of the incredible men at IAS, July 17, 1999
Reviewer: A reader

If you are interested in what happened in the 20th century in science, technology, and ultimately history, then you will want to know what happened at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ in the 1930s - 1950s.
The array of talent at IAS from Einstein, Von Neumman, Godel, Pauli, and Dirac present at one-time was truly breathtaking.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Down to earth enjoyable read about brilliant scholars, April 5, 1999
By gregd@warwick.net (middletown, ny) - See all my reviews

There is little I can understand about theoretical physics or much else that is pondered by the geniuses at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. However, Ed Regis does a great job of bringing these intellectual heroes down to a level that an average person can enjoy and understand. This was just a great bedtime read- Regis has the intellect to appreciate and understand these folks while able to tweak at their pettinesses and jealousies.

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