Experimental Blog #104

Comments on "Ordinary Geniuses - Max Delbruck, George Gamow, and the Origins of Genomics and Big Bang Cosmology" by Gino Segre' and "E=mc{squared}" - A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

In spite of the communist regime in the Soviet Union, George Gamow had become a well known young physicist by 24 years of age who had been sometimes allowed to study in Germany and England in the 1920s. However, in 1933 he took advantage of being allowed to attend a science conference in Brussels, Belgium, and he and his wife, who had been allowed to go with him, did not return to their country. They both came to America in 1934.

George Gamow had many interests besides physics, including cosmology and genetics. The author, Gino Segre', says that, although Gamow's many scientific ideas were usually wrong, they very often importantly contributed to the developement of more correct concepts. George Gamow also wrote many popular science books.

Max Delbruck, in Weimar Germany, also became a promising physicist before he was 30 years of age. Germay was a country that seems to have produced many, if not most, of the world's prominent physicists for several decades up to that time. However, Nazi Germany drastically affected German science, and scientists, and Max Delbruck, who was not Jewish, came to America in 1937. By this time Max Delbruck was more involved with biology, more specifically genetics, and he became one of the principal founders of the new science of molecular biology.


This second book is by a very capable mathematician and science writer, David Bodanis. It was a "best seller" popular science book, and it has very much more in it than science.
David Bodanis describes the life and work of Albert Einstein, and many other people besides. A few of these people are seemingly "saintly", such as Albert, but some others are apparently more "wicked".