Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, by Brandon R. Brown
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Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, by Brandon R. Brown
Best Ebook Online Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, by Brandon R. Brown
Max Planck is credited with being the father of quantum theory, and his work was described by his close friend Albert Einstein as "the basis of all twentieth-century physics." But Planck's story is not well known, especially in the United States. A German physicist working during the first half of the twentieth century, his library, personal journals, notebooks, and letters were all destroyed with his home in World War II. What remains, other than his contributions to science, are handwritten letters in German shorthand, and tributes from other scientists of the time. In Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Brandon R. Brown interweaves the voices and writings of Planck, his family, and his contemporaries--with many passages appearing in English for the first time--to create a portrait of a groundbreaking physicist working in the midst of war. Planck spent much of his adult life grappling with the identity crisis of being an influential German with ideas that ran counter to his government. During the later part of his life, he survived bombings and battlefields, surgeries and blood transfusions, all the while performing his influential work amidst a violent and crumbling Nazi bureaucracy. When his son was accused of treason, Planck tried to use his standing as a German "national treasure," and wrote directly to Hitler to spare his son's life. Brown tells the story of Planck's friendship with the far more outspoken Albert Einstein, and shows how his work fits within the explosion of technology and science that occurred during his life. This story of a brilliant man living in a dangerous time gives Max Planck his rightful place in the history of science, and it shows how war-torn Germany deeply impacted his life and work.
Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, by Brandon R. Brown - Amazon Sales Rank: #74513 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.30" h x 1.00" w x 9.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 280 pages
Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, by Brandon R. Brown Review One of The London Times' Best History Books of 2015.
Selected as one of the Best Science Books of 2015 by Science for the People.
One of Scientific American's June 2015 recommended titles.
One of Discover's recommended reads for the summer of 2015.
Selected as one of Choice's 2015 Outstanding Academic Titles in the History of Science & Technology category.
Honorable Mention, 2016 Prose Award: Popular Science & Popular Mathematics
"Max Planck's name is one of the best known in twentieth-century physics and Planck's story is one of the least known. Brandon Brown's eminently readable book helps us get to know better this giant of science." --Istvan Hargittai, author of Martians of Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
"Planck had his flaws, but readers of this engrossing, insightful, and definitive biography will share Brown's admiration and agree that he deserves his iconic reputation." --Publisher's Weekly, starred review
"[Planck's] latest biographer, physics professor Brandon Brown, is his best: searching, sympathetic, and technically informed. ... He's a lively writer and a first-rate explainer... Certainly a worthwhile thing to read..." --Open Letters Monthly
"Like Max Planck, the subject of his fascinating and deeply moving new book, Brandon Brown assembles prose "in the manner of a master watch maker," placing readers with care and precision in the heart of history, science, friendship, and family. The book throbs with the warmth and tragedy of human connections, and it is suspenseful on many levels: cultural, emotional, intellectual. Einstein once said Planck pursued science from a hunger in his soul: Brown's book proceeds with a similar pure urgency. Seldom have life, work, and love, and their nourishing intersections, been so well, so attentively, and so beautifully described." -- Tracy Daugherty, author of The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion, Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller, and Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme.
"Planck is beautifully written, dramatic, engaging, and completely accessible. ... This engrossing and surprising book helps us understand some of the deepest and most fascinating topics in physics, while it also shows how personal relationships shaped the history of science. -- Laura Helmuth, Science and Health Editor, Slate magazine
"[T]his biography looks more deeply into the mind and personality of its subject than many scientific biographies. And Planck's life is worth examining for the lessons it illustrates about scientists working within a society that values ideology over intelligence." --Science News
"[T]here's ... an important story to be told about these tragedies, and its told rather perfectly by Brandon Brown... Wonderful." --London Times
"Max Planck is a compelling character and Brown's fervour is inspiring. He has done a great service by shedding light on the life and work of a very brilliant though troubled individual, 'father of quantum theory' and witness to the greatest upheavals of the 20th century." --History Today
"Brown paints an intimate portrait of Planck in lithe, lively prose and avoids the worshipful tones that sometimes mark popular scientific biographies. ... Although this is a popular history that focuses more on its subject's life than his work, Brown demonstrates careful attention to the historical literature. The brief discussions of the scientific research conducted by Planck and his cohort, interspersed throughout, are deftly described and true to their times. The story of Planck's life is a remarkable one, and no fuller or more readable account exists in the English language. Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"The life of Max Planck, 'father of quantum theory,' smacks of enigma: his personal papers were mostly destroyed in the Second World War. Physicist Brandon Brown has mined what survived for this illuminating biography." --Nature
"Brown's engaging biography of Planck is beautifully written and will be accessible to a broad readership of physicists and historians. It is popular history of science at its best." --Physics Today
"Planck is an illuminating and thought-provoking book about one of physics' near-greats and his troubled times." --Physics World
"Historians of leading physicists and their complex scientific theories will appreciate Brown's inclusion of many of them here. ... Understanding the science is not necessary to appreciate the main points of the book, however." --H-Net Online
About the Author Brandon R. Brown is a Professor of Physics at the University of San Francisco. His biophysics work on the electric sense of sharks, as covered by NPR and the BBC, has appeared in Nature, The Physical Review, and other research journals. His writing for general audiences has appeared in New Scientist, SEED, the Huffington Post, and other outlets.
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Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful. Entertaining, Emotional, and Insightful Bio--Highly recommended By H. As someone who majored in Physics in college, then went on to become a Historian in grad school, I am a tough critic when it comes to books on science or history. Therefore, it's not lightly that I recommend this entertaining, emotional, and insightful biography. Max Planck was a genius, and also a man who lived through tragedy and chaos. He was the originator of Quantum Theory and he also outlived four of his children. He was friends with Einstein and Lise Meitner and yet he lived in Germany during Hitler's reign. (Not to mention his son Erwin would eventually be arrested and put on trial by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof.) Though I was familiar with Planck because of Planck's Law and Planck's Constant, which I had to use in many college era computations, I had no idea until this book that he lived such a colorful and turbulent life.And more subtly, though perhaps the best part of the book, Planck's personality is revealed. The book provides an all too rare personal glimpse of one of the rare, brilliant men who revolutionized Physics. It reveals him to be a humorous man who loved hikes, a man who was an affectionate father, a lover of music and long chats with friends, and yet also a man hardened by tragedy and Hitler's Germany which were trials he was not spared in his later years. And all throughout, he remained Planck, a man whose mobile and brilliant mind continued to grasp and forward the slipperiest notions of modern physics.Brandon Brown has written a lucid and engaging book that has something for everyone. Science, World War II, an individual who is brilliant, moral, and sorely tried--this biography has it all. Highly recommended.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. A deep and rich study of an enigmatic scientist. By goodcampsite I'm a mathematician, but I majored in history in college, so I often find scientist biographies for laypeople lacking. This book is different: Brown has taken a fascinating and tragic life and turned its story into a artfully layered intellectual and personal history. He fearlessly eschews a linear timeline approach and anchors his book with events in the 1940s (when Planck was in his 80s, long after his greatest scientific discoveries), intertwining them with his earlier life and his relationships with pretty much all the giants of 20th-century physics (especially, Einstein) as well as Hitler and the Nazis.It's a short book---barely 200 pages---but it's dense and deep and rich. A very thought-provoking book about an enigmatic man, with many insights about the nature of science and impossible choices that people must make in times of war. Highly recommended.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Highly Recommended. By G. Kraai This is a great book. Brandon Brown is an excellent writer who makes everything crisp and clear. The relationship between Einstein and Planck is extrememely interesting. I was only vaguely aware of the depth their relationship until I read this book. The book also sheds an interesting light on the Nazi times and the fervent, but blind belief many in Germany had at the time. It is also the sad story of the "h" man imortalized in E=hv, an equation nearly as famous as E= mc2
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