Divided into seven sections (The Early Years, At Los Alamos, The Cornell Years, The Research Physicist at Caltech, The Teacher at Caltech, The Public Physicist and Consultant, and Feynman--The Man), this fine book presents Richard Feynman as he was seen by those closest to him--his friends and colleagues. To their credit, they present him as they knew him, the qualities with the flaws.

The book is especially successful in communicating Feynman's way of thinking, the processes he used in attacking problems. The essay entitled "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine" by W. Daniel Hills is notably successful in this regard, and by itself justifies the purchase of the book. I found it especially interesting that Feynman was fascinated, as I am, by the potential of cellular automata for modeling fluids. Readers with the same interest should also consider purchasing Seek! by Rudy Rucker.

Five or so essays by other physicists who knew Feynman contain mathematics that is proably beyond the ability of the average reader (certainly mine), but even these contain gems of insight that reward readers who wade through them.

All in all, a most satisfying experience.

Fascinating and insiteful lectures from many of the great people in the world of physics. Amusing anecdotes, touching tributes, and glimpses into the private life of a genius who was also extremely human and persevered through very painful personal problems to help create the atomic bomb while his wife was seriously ill, yet keeping his spirits up and his sense of humor. Never a person to rest on his laurels Feynman is shown in this book as a person who listened intently to other people's theories, no matter how odd they sounded and never assumed anything was right or wrong until he worked it out for himself from first principles. It's all here, his life, his work, his friends, family and colleagues - but most of all his spirit.

The photographs alone inspire awe. For a layman, this is a
very good book, with very brief descriptions of different
aspects of 20th century physics presented along with the
magical photographs. Perhaps, the non-specialist can glimpse
the fascination and beauty of physics from the photos and can
get just an idea of why the professionals are so dedicated to
this most basic of all scientific disciplines.

This book covers all of the major advances in physics in the last 100 years. After reading this, it becomes clear how far we have come in our understanding in just 100 short years. Fascinating pictures as well. Highly recommended, an excellent resource for teachers and students.

An excellent book for those who never tire of learning more about science and the nature of the universe. In addition to beautiful photographs and clear descriptions of the science, the book provides interesting human and historic information on the discovery process. Easy, informative and entertaining reading.

The author takes us on a history of 20th century physics by focusing on the signal element of Hydrogen. He does a good job of providing enough technical detail to make it clear why certain discoveries are important without overwhelming you. His choice of focusing on Hydrogen does limit him a little as to what he looks at though. A fairly short book so worth the investment in time for me.

It makes sense, if you are going to try to understand something, to go to the simplest instance of it and get all the information you can from the subject unimpeded by complications. Hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms. It is all around us; though hydrogen gas floats out of our atmosphere to join the hydrogen atoms that are in the "vacuum" of space, hydrogen makes up a large proportion of stars, water, and ourselves. John S. Rigden has written an admiring tribute to the simplest atom, _Hydrogen: The Essential Element_ (Harvard University Press). It turns out that hydrogen has played an enormous role in our understanding of matter and energy, and that the simplest of atoms is so complicated and surprising that Rigden's book is a continual source of elemental wonder.

Hydrogen is element number one, only a single electron orbiting a single proton. Repeatedly Rigden shows that this simplicity has been a boon to research. The lessons learned from this basic atom, in Rigden's story, form a history of physics in the twentieth century. The refinements to theory have largely been to explain the dark bands in the spectrum produce when hydrogen is made to glow. Niels Bohr produced the first modern picture of the atom, incorporating the experimental data from Rutherford and the hydrogen spectrum, but recklessly disregarding the historic laws of physics which he felt could not apply within the atom. He thus began the amazingly successful and fabulously strange quantum explanation for the behavior of matter. Rigden has not just included experimenters and theorizers, but also appealing stories about them, such as I. I. Rabi developing magnetic resonance in the 1930s to measure the nucleus, but then in 1988 being wheeled into a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine. He said, "It was eerie... I would never have dreamed that my work would come to this." _Hydrogen_ is not just about understanding the inner workings of the atom, but also about hydrogen as the ticker of a clock, as anti-matter, and as a confirmer of big bang cosmology.

There are plenty of challenging chapters here, meant for the non-scientist but not necessarily easy reading. Although the mathematics is not detailed, there are some equations shown that could be intimidating; Dirac's equation, predicting antiparticles and electron spin, Rigden assures us is a "little equation" that can be "written in one line," and while this is true, the line has twenty algebraic symbols in it. Also, surprisingly, there is little about the hydrogen bomb. Rigden decided that the bomb did not fit into the theme of how the hydrogen atom has led and will continue to lead to improved scientific knowledge. His charming and informative book shows how some mysteries have been solved but that we should never come to the conclusion that we are close to knowing all: "After all, H stands not only for hydrogen, but also for humility."