This book deals with the history of physics, covering important developments in physics from the end of the nineteenth century to about 1930. Major topics include relativity theory (both special and general) and quantum mechanics.

This book is unique in that it concentrates on anecdotes about the physicists creating the new ideas. Both thematic and biographical in nature, it contains a heavy emphasis on personal incidents or quotes. Readers will be entertained with humorous incidents in the lives of some famous scientists, and simultaneously learn quite a bit of modern physics without the mathematical details, but with the important concepts. Academics and anyone interested in science in the most general sense are likely to want to read this book.

Contents:

• Thermodynamics: Founders and Flounderers
• Cracks Appear in Classical Physics
• It’s About Time and Space
• Space Becomes Curved
• Kilns and Quanta
• The Hydrogen Atom: Plum-Pudding or Planet
• Action in Physics: The Old Quantum Theory
• Particles are Waves are Particles
• Schrödinger Makes Waves
• Boys’ Physics and Quantum Jumping
• Matrix Mechanics is Born
• The Purest Soul’s Beautiful Quantum Mechanics
• Quantum Mechanics is Complete
• The Electron Spins
• Index

“Capri has woven these stories so skillfully into an exposition of modern physics and its historical development that the reader hardly notices he is learning something (in fact a great deal) as he gets carried from one laugh to the next. My mouth is watering for Volume 2.”