The Age of Entanglement

September 1, 2008
The story of quantum mechanics and its lively cast of supporters, “heretics” and agnostics has always fascinated science historians and popular science readers. Gilder's version differs from the familiar tale in two important ways. First, by focusing on the problem of entanglement—the supposed “telepathic” connection between particles that a skeptical Einstein called “spooky action-at-a-distance”—Gilder includes more recent developments leading to quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Second, Gilder exercises—not wholly successfully—a daring creative license, drawing excerpts from papers, journals and letters to construct dialogues among the scientists. “Science is rooted in conversations,” Werner Heisenberg once wrote, and Gilder's created conversations reveal personalities as well as thought processes: “Do you really believe the moon is not there if no one looks?” asks Einstein. Less comfortable aspects of the era are also part of Gilder's story, the uncertainty and fear as one scientist after another fled Nazi Germany, the paranoia of the Manhattan Project and the McCarthy era. Gilder's history is rife with curious characters and dramatizes how difficult it was for even these brilliant scientists to grasp the paradigm-changing concepts of quantum science. 20 illus., 15 by the author.

November 1, 2008
"Entanglement" refers to linkages between such miniscule objects as photons or electrons; the connections can be so close that even when the objects are then separated by a great distance, the linkage still exists. Incredibly, a change in one of the entangled particles is instantly transmitted to the other particle, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe. In her first book, Gilder, who studied physics at Dartmouth College, leads her readers through the history of quantum mechanics from 1900 up to the recent experimental proofs that entanglement (which Einstein more than once ridiculed as a "spooky" concept) is indeed a fact. She wishes to demonstrate that "physics, in actuality, is a never-ending search made by human beings." Her book is chiefly an assemblage of excerpts from the biographies, memoirs, and correspondence of leading physicists, most of which are already very familiar to students of the history of modern physics. The volume makes for entertaining light reading but doesn't dig very deeply into the current understanding of entanglement. Other recent books (such as Brian Clegg's "The Good Effect: Quantum Entanglement, Science's Strangest Phenomenon") do a better job of explaining the science in the story. An optional purchase for larger collections.Jack W. Weigel, Ann Arbor, MI

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2008
Gilder has taken to heart Heisenbergs declaration that science is rooted in conversations. By recounting decisive conversations between researchers, she illuminates the tortuous path of quantum mechanics. Readers eavesdrop, for instance, on Schrdingersick and bed-boundas he challenges Bohrs dismissal of pictorial thinking. They listen in as Einstein pauses on a train platform to urge de Broglie to press his quixotic fight against quantum orthodoxy. Gradually, the realization dawns that the formulas of physics come from cross-grained personalities, animated by unpredictable emotions. The literal-minded may question the imaginative liberties Gilder takes in converting passages from letters and memoirs into face-to-face exchanges. But most readers will relish the psychological interplay she depicts. The character of the brash young John Bell emerges in such interplay, as he disputes the reasoning of a colleague smugly certain than no hidden variables inhere in quantum events. For in reacting against that smugness, Bell launches an epoch-making inquiry into the way subatomic particles remain linkedentangledafter separation. Lamentably, Bell dies before his findings open exciting new vistas in quantum computing. But this compelling history of his accomplishment will stimulate more of the seminal conversations that generate new science. No book more fully delivers the creative excitement of science.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)