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Picture
Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum
Revolution
by John Gribbin



risk-taker who rode the wave

Aided
by a strong technical understanding and a robust research team, Gribbin's
expository texts are many and his experience commendable in explaining,
anticipating possible barriers to comprehension, and putting theory into
perspective. In this biography of Schrodinger, he covers many topics that he has
treated previously. He even invites his readers to skip the chapter on wave
mechanics if they have read In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. I didn't skip it
because I was finding this book, built on the writing and feedback of many
earlier books, compellingly comprehensible. His explanation (p 140) of
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is as simple as I've read. The book has good
Notes, Further Reading and an excellent Index.

No doubt Gribbin's vast
library of expository work helped him identify the opportunity to pull together
a biography of Schrodinger. Physics was the major part of Schrodinger's life and
Gribbin gets it right. Gribbin also investigates Schrodinger's life and times.
While he doesn't pull any punches detailing Schodinger's romantic affairs, poor
decisions and their consequences, the analysis helps us understand the man and
is never prurient. The upheaval of early twentieth century Europe created
physical and mental turmoil for Schrodinger and Gribbin's historical commentary
is direct and cogent. Schrodinger tended to have one eye on his career and
another on the future security of his family. While not discounting the unusual,
almost ridiculous, positions into which Schrodinger placed himself, Gribbin
reconciles the physicist's motivations well. This is exemplified by
Schrodinger's admirable, yet to his peers imponderable, public support of each
his wife, lover and illegitimate child when living on British charity at Oxford,
and also by his very European views of career options in the Americas.
Nevertheless, as William McRae remarked to Gribbin, "Schrodinger had a singular
talent for taking risks."

In
assessing Schrodinger's excursion into biology with his book What is Life,
Gribbin notes "that what is good in the book is not original, and that what is
original in the book is not good". Dry humour aside, Gribbin shows how
Schrodinger inspired a generation of biologists: quoting Francis Crick "he
certainly made it seem as if great things were just around the corner" which,
for Crick, they were.

Gribbin concludes in Schrodinger-like style,
introducing the physicist's scientific legacy with very up-to-date accounts of
testing quantum entanglement, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation and
quantum computing. A post-note introduces a new character, allowing another dig
at the Copenhagen Interpretation, but more importantly realising two of
Schrodinger's lifelong wishes, one of which was the connectedness of all
reality.
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