Understanding relativity: A simplified approach to Einstein's theories

Understanding relativity: A simplified approach to Einstein's theories

a young person’s game. This awkward fact makes writing about the lives of great scientists somewhat tricky. The punch line comes early on in the saga ...

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a young person’s game. This awkward fact makes writing about the lives of great scientists somewhat tricky. The punch line comes early on in the saga and one is left to cover many declining years in which little is accomplished. This prospect, however, has not deterred a vast army of authors from producing a rapidly increasing number of such biographies. Indeed, the biography business may be said to be booming as never before; new biographies are being snapped up with ever growing enthusiasm. Currently, there are some 200 biographies of Charles Darwin and comparable numbers for other greats. We may ask how long this can go on, since in most cases the facts are now well established. What about the quality of the newer works and who should be judging quality in any case? Such questions are addressed and answers given in one of the ten contributed chapters in this book. The remaining nine chapters discuss topics as varied as the public images of Michael Faraday, science and the French Revolution, biographies of Florence Nightingale for girls, the changing public perception of Royal Society president Sir Joseph Banks, and Robert Boyle and the age of scientific revolution. This work makes for some stimulating reading and is well timed in that it has appeared when there is a notable resurgence of interest in scientific biography. Dennis H. Rouvray

Food Webs: Integration of Pattern and Dynamics. Edited by G.A. folis and K.O. Winemiller. Pp. 472. Chapman & Hall, 1996. f45.00. 412 04051 4.

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written and edited, volume is substantial and stimulating. I believe it will be an important reference point in the field and I would strongly recommend it to anyone working in community ecology. The book comprises six sections: ‘Detritus and nutrients’,‘Interaction of productivity and consumption’, ‘Causes and effects’, ‘Temporal and spatial scale’, ‘Food webs and applied problems’, and finally ‘Syntheses’, each with its own overview. These usefully divide the 32 primary chapters into manageable chunks, and overall the volume has a coherent feel. The predominant and thought-provoking themes which are left rattling around the reader’s mind include the importance of spatial movement of organisms and nutrients in and between food webs; the complex effects that changes in productivity in a food web can have on chain length and biomass; the complex and unpredictable effects of indirect interactions between species; and the importance of the details of species biology and behaviour in the dynamics of even simple food chains. The details of this complexity, while wholly fascinating, generate a tension when placed alongside the need to develop general principles and predictive theory in food web ecology. The hard-won insights in this volume will be an important tool in meeting that challenge. One does not come away convinced that we are right on the brink of a general, predictive, theory for all food webs, but one is left with the refreshing feeling that the issues are being actively debated in a relatively non-dogmatic and - one must hope, for the sake of our increasingly degraded ecosystems - productive way. Philip H. Warren

This volume is largely based on papers from a workshop on food web ecology held in Colorado in 1993, with additional synthetic material addressing the themes emerging from these. In it the editors make explicit comparison between the content of this meeting and a previous food web workshop (at Oak Ridge) a decade before. If this comparison is indicative of the field in general, then food web ecology has moved away from analyses of patterns in food web topology, and from very general, abstract theory. Now, there is much more emphasis on empirical (especially experimental) analyses, and the use of theory to explore the potential complexities of interpreting the dynamics of real webs. A much more balanced coverage of habitats is also evident. Work on food web topology is acknowledged as having stimulated work on food webs, but none of the papers really tackle the issue of what can or can’t be learnt from this approach, which is, perhaps, a missed opportunity. The shift in emphasis between the meetings is characterized in the Preface, by Robert Paine, as ‘a decade of conceptual evolution and a relatively painless refocusing of the issues’. The resulting, well

Understanding Relativity: A Simplified Approach to Einstein’s Theories. By L. Sat-tori. Pp. 367. University of California Press, 1996. Hardback f 40.00/US$50.00; paperback f 15.95/US$19.95. ISBN 0 520 20029 2. Outside the physics community, surprisingly little is known about one of the greatest achievements of the human intellect, namely, the theory of relativity. This is unfortunate since in purely conceptual terms the theory is readily accessible to any audience with even the barest grasp of mathematics and physics. Most of the books that set out to enlighten us on Einstein’s theory tend to leave us still a little confused and some even make matters more opaque. Not so with Leo Sartori’s book, which shows us how it should be done. From the start we are in the hands of an author who not only has a penetrating knowledge of his subject but who knows how to explain it in understandable language. Sartori first gives us a fairly comprehensive account of earlier work in physics

that was eventually to form the basis of relativity theory. Thus, we learn of the pioneers Hendrik Lorentz, Ernst Mach and Hemi Poincare; indeed, the latter may be viewed as the father of relativity as it was he who first introduced a ‘principle of relativity’. When we get to the actual exposition of the theory, Sartori’s lightness of touch unfailingly propels us through all of the basic ideas of relativity with the minimum of mathematics. Moreover, he also delves into a number of related topics such as the paradoxes of relativity, the decay of subatomic particles, the curvature of space, and the history of the evolution of the universe. This is a work that excites and inspires; it should have a place in every serious library of science. Dennis H. Rouvray

Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. By R.L. Sime. Pp. 526. University of California Press, 1996. f30.00. ISBN 0 520 08906 5. There can be little doubt that Lise Meitner was one of the great physicists of the twentieth century. Yet surprisingly little has been written about her remarkable career. It all began when she succeeded against all the odds in obtaining a doctorate in physics. She went on to become the first woman professor of physics in Germany at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. During her tenure there she carried out groundbreaking research in virtually every area of ‘experimental nuclear physics, including the splitting of heavy atomic nuclei. It is thus small wonder that Einstein referred to her as “our Marie Curie”. Her life however was never to be a bed of roses. In 1938 she was forced to leave Germany and flee to Sweden because of her Jewish ancestry. There she became largely forgotten and was even passed over for the award of a Nobel Prize, though undoubtedly deserving of it. Immediately after atomic weapons had first been used, she was dubbed the “Jewish mother of the Atom Bomb’, a characterization that was completely inaccurate. In fact, she had long since converted to Christianity and during World War II had consistently refused to collaborate on the Allied bomb. In this work the entire life of Meitner is covered in meticulous detail and a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of her many achievements is given. It is a story of astonishing fortitude and forbearance maintained throughout her lifetime in spite of the vicious sexism and antisemitism of her age. This book is an inspiration to us all. Dennis H. Rouvray

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