It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science

by Graham Farmelo

Book Overview

Equations lie at the heart of many of the most extraordinarily successful scientific theories. Here, some of the greatest living scientists unpack the best known equations so that they become... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1862074798
• ISBN13: 9781862074798
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Granta Books (Uk)
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

'It Must Be Beautiful" is truly BEAUTIFUL

This book is written so that anyone with a general science background can understand the importance of the work and discoveries of these great minds. It demonstrates how their work has played a strategic roll in the historical events of our time and how it may affect the very future of mankind. Besides analyzing the studies and writtings of these scientists, the book also gives us a very good description of their character and personality. One actually feels a personnel contact with each of them their unique traits are so carefully described. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in science or history and to every college and high school student.

It Must Be beautiful

This book had some of the best insight on equatiion form i have read in the rescent past.I could read larger sections of it without haviong to go grab a bottle of asprin. The insight it gave on the personal lives and how the evolution of the equation came to be from raw base form to what we learn now is amazing. The sections on Diracs eqaution I found the most intresting. I would reccommend this book to anyone intrested in math and not just the text book side. It takes almost and artistic veiw on math which i have never seen before. Very intresting .DIG IN AND ENJOY

It is!

The quantities on the two side of each of the equations in the book, are from science, or from life. The equations result from scientific experiments or from pure theory. Planck's equation signaled the start of atomic physics, and Einstein's E=m c^2 , the continuation. Dirac's equation reveals the secrets of the electron. All the equations predict physical reality; and yet they are strikingly simple to state, perhaps not to fully understand.-- They *are* beautiful! . Really! They are also fundamental discoveries that affect us all. Schrodinger's equation [along with the equivalt formulation of Heisenberg] puts quantum theory on a solid footing, and started wave mechanics. Shannon's equations initiated the age of information technology. And there are more: relativity, astronomy, dynamics, chemestry... The book consists of chapters written by authorities in the field, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg..., but no [or at least very little] knowledge of science is assumed on the part of the reader. Highly recommended!

beautiful equations

IMBB is not an easy book to read, but it is one that continues to reward with subsequent readings. Though the first half of the book is weighted toward physics, this is not a physics book. It also explores equations important in biology, ecology, information theory, game theory and SETI. Some of the essays require a fairly deep background in science to "get" the subtleties, but even these pay rewards for careful reading. You don't need to understand every word of the technical science to get a sense of the history and the people who uncovered these equations and how they apply to our modern world.If you have seen Frayn's Copenhagen, the essay on Schrodinger's equation entitled "Erotica, Aesthetics and Schrodinger's Wave Equation", will give you additional insight into Heisenberg, Bohr and Schrodinger.As editor Farmelo says in his introduction "In common with with all great scientific equations, E=MC2 is in many ways similar to a great poem. Just as a perfect sonnet is spoiled if so much as a word or item of punctuation is changed, not a single detail of a great equation...can be altered without rendering it useless."In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I receive an acknowledgement after Farmelo's essay on Einstein and Planck.