Australian Independent Bookseller

All the best books from your local independent bookseller

The Age of Uncertainty

The Age of Uncertainty

by Tobias Hurter and David Shaw (Translator)

The epic, page-turning history of how a group of physicists toppled the Newtonian universe in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Format
Paperback
Category
Non-Fiction
Publisher
Penguin Random House
Publish Date
August 2022

Marie Curie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrodinger, and Albert Einstein didn't only revolutionise physics; they redefined our world and the reality we live in. In The Age of Uncertainty, Tobias Hurter brings to life the golden age of physics and its dazzling, flawed, and unforgettable heroes and heroines. He immerses us in a half century of global turmoil against which some of humankind's greatest and strangest scientific discoveries unfolded, expertly guiding us through the brilliant and mind-bending ideas that turned the world on its head. The work of the twentieth century's most important physicists produced scientific breakthroughs that led to an entirely new view of physics - and a view of the universe that is still not fully understood today, even as evidence for its accuracy is all around us. The men and women who made these discoveries were intellectual adventurers, renegades, dandies, and nerds, some bound together by deep friendship; others, by bitter enmity. But the age of relativity theory and quantum mechanics was also the age of wars and revolutions. The discovery of radioactivity transformed science, but also led to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout The Age of Uncertainty, Hurter reminds us about the entanglement of science and world events, for we cannot observe the world without changing it.

Other titles you should consider ...

The Season

Helen Garner

Minority Report

George Megalogenis

Not all products are available in all stores.