In this anthology of science and physics, Richard P. Brennan chronicles the life, times, and ideas of the great physicists of the 20th century. In the preface, he praises the extraordinary directors who made a great contribution to the principles of Quantum Mechanics: advanced reasoning from the likes of Newton, Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Feynman. Each of these great minds contributed important theories and breakthroughs to improve the world view of physics; His thought projects a continuous study into the very essence of matter.
Setting the stage and foundation for classical physics, Brennan quotes the great physicist Isaac Newton (1676), who refers to even older theorists, even to the time of the biblical Daniel and the Greek Democritus. Newton said: “If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants..” In fact, more giants were on the way; they would develop a division of effort between Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Meanwhile, our intrepid author touches on the contribution of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to motion and velocity, whose observations were built in the inquisitive mind of Newton, who was the first to disperse light into its spectrum and then into white light, concluding that light consisted of tiny particles. Beginning, Newton entered F = ma (Force equals mass times acceleration), now considered the most useful physical law ever written. Newton assumed the cosmological system to prove the existence of God and thought that science was a form of worship.
Brennan briefly addresses the next four hundred years of minor advances, until the arrival of the supreme genius of our time, Albert Einstein. Silently, Einstein thought his way down the story. he imagined Special relativity, constancy of the speed of light and infinity of mass at the speed of light, E = mc2, and Relativity of Simultaneity incorporated. To this observation, he later developed General relativity: containing, in essence, Equivalence Principles, while gravity and inertia are two different words for the same thing. Einstein forever changed the way the intellect must intercept the appearance of time, space, and matter. Add to this his Cosmological Constant, later rejected, later still revived: a factor in accounting for the invisible force that holds our universe in continuous space.
Albert Einstein’s contemporary, Max Karl Ernest Ludwig Planck, rose to prominence in 1900, at the age of 42, Einstein then about 21 years old. Equally astute, Planck is the father of Quantum Physics, ushering in Modern Physics as opposed to Classical Physics: the Quantum Theory of the operating medium. Planck developed his equation E = hf and thus removed the deadlock on the frequency of light and heat, the wavelength, and the propensity for radiation. His equation designated: ‘a quantum of energy, E, is equal to the frequency, f, of the radiation multiplied by the ‘Planck constant’, h. Einstein wrote a laudatory tribute to Max Planck, as someone outstanding in the field of science.
Also a contemporary of Einstein and Planck, Ernest Rutherford rose to fame, receiving accolades such as “the father of nuclear energyRutherford also originated the determination of the half-life of radioactive substances, considering that all living things contain carbon. With a half-life of 5,570 years, carbon-14 breaks down to nitrogen-14 and can be measured with some precision. The unbreakable habit is useful for dating the age of many geophysical, archaeological, and paleontological specimens.
Brennan notes: “While Einstein was a theorist, Rutherford was an experimenter.” As a side note, his book anthology praises the renowned physicists as intellectuals inclined to musical talent, in addition to a lifelong interest in metaphysics. Like the requirement of metaphysical exegesis, the search for the invisible and unknown in physics depends on intuition, fearlessness, serendipity, and above all, concentration.
Niels Bohr was another contemporary of the aforementioned great physicists and stood out at the Fifth Solvay Congress, where nearly 30 of the world’s most renowned physicists met to discuss Quantum Mechanics, complementarity, discontinuity, continuity, correspondence, duality and the Begining of uncertainty. Niels Bohr was not the last, but he was one of the many honored by Brennan’s pen. If one wants to walk the long path from physics to Quantum Mechanics, the advancement of knowledge, or to explore the intellect of the thinkers who paved the way, then this book is a good place to start. How wonderful to have this set of thoughts from the great minds of the giants of physics.
Apart from the world’s leading physics studies, the vast field of metaphysics is open to reassessment, syllogistic affirmation, or rejection. Advanced studies are available to explore humanity’s greatest motivating force: its susceptibility to the unfathomable, the unseen, and the unknown. Brennan makes several observations about the preoccupation of great minds with the mystery of biblical interpretation.