By Jeremy Bernstein

Over the years, Jeremy Bernstein has been involved with a few of the world’s most famous physicists and different scientists, a lot of whom have been eager about politics, literature, and language. during this different selection of essays, he displays on their paintings, their own relationships, their factors, and their contributions. Even for these humans he writes approximately that he didn't comprehend for my part, he offers vital insights into their lives and paintings, and questions their personality, their judgements, and the lives they led.

In the 1st 3 essays, for instance, Professor Bernstein seems to be at financial idea and the way a few physicists who constructed fascinating financial types in keeping with derivatives and hedge money nearly ended in the rustic out of business. In later essays, he discusses a suspect stopover at to Poland by way of the good Heisenberg in the course of the Nazi period, a trip that there's nearly not anything written about.

There are essays on historical languages and a nuclear guns application in South Africa that used to be supposedly dismantled. in a single relatively funny essay, he describes how an ill-conceived manned spaceship to be powered through an atomic bomb used to be being built via a number of the country’s strongest intellects. remember that, the venture by no means bought off the ground!

Dipping into those pages is like rummaging round within the brain of a genius who has a potpourri of pursuits and an abundance of interesting stories. Bernstein has not just has rubbed elbows with the various best minds in international, he has labored with them and performed with them. He has occasionally mourned with them and laughed at them. His sharp wit or even sharper research make for interpreting you just can’t positioned down.

Show description

Read or Download Physicists on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society PDF

Similar economic theory books

William Jaffe's Essays on Walras

During this ebook Dr Walker brings jointly Dr William Jaff? 's essays at the very important and fascinating paintings of L? on Walras, the founding father of common equilibrium research. The essays have been chosen at the foundation in their value to the Walrasian literature, in that they supply info on Walras's highbrow biography with which we'd rather be unusual or they make contributions to the translation and research of his principles.

The Art of Smooth Pasting (Fundamentals of Pure and Applied Economics)

The most mathematical principles are offered in a context with which economists might be time-honored. utilizing a binomial approximation to Brownian movement, the math is diminished to basic algebra, progressing to a few both basic limits. the start line of the calculus of Brownian movement -- "It? 's Lemma" -- emerges via analogy with the economics of risk-aversion.

Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics

The Elgar spouse to Hayekian Economics presents an in-depth remedy of Friedrich August von Hayek's financial suggestion from his technical economics of the Twenties and Thirties to his broader perspectives at the spontaneous order of a unfastened society. Taken jointly, the chapters exhibit facts either one of continuity of notion and of important adjustments in concentration.

One-dot Theory Described, Explained, Inferred, Justified, and Applied

The traditional chinese language students are keen on utilising the Yin and Yang diagram to correlate nearly every thing. This booklet keeps that culture and makes use of the version to review different non-"dialectical" theories and versions. the foremost discovering qua contribution during this ebook is to indicate that the 4 diagrams are corresponding to the BaGua or BaGuaTu (B.

Extra resources for Physicists on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society

Example text

Freeman spent over a year in La Jolla, and was for a time considering moving there permanently. On one of my visits he told me a remarkable story. Not long before my visit, he been arrested for “walking” in La Jolla. He had gone out for a Sunday stroll and was stopped by a policeman. Freeman added off-handedly that, prior to his walk, he had broken his glasses, so he was wearing a pair of motorcycle goggles. When asked for identification by the officer he produced a red and black badge from Los Alamos, with his picture and fingerprints, stating that its bearer was entitled to receive top secret defense information.

The physics group, of which I was a part, was focused on nuclear weapons and their effects. One of its stars was the late Herman Kahn, who was trying to make us feel comfortable with the concept of “mega-deaths”—ours and the Russians. When, a few years later, I saw Dr. Strangelove in which the RAND Corporation had been renamed the BLAND Corporation, it rang a bell. This was not too surprising, since Stanley Kubrick had saturated himself in RAND reports and, indeed, Khan was one of the models for Strangelove.

However, it was pointed out to him that in his journal he said that these professors should be returned to Poland either for liquidation or imprisonment. ” Frank also claimed that he encouraged higher education in Poland under the occupation, something which certainly would come as a surprise to the people who lived under it. html. In his diary Frank records his comment on the Sonderaktion: “We cannot burden the Reich concentration camps with our affairs. The trouble we had with the Cracow professors was awful.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.76 of 5 – based on 39 votes