The epic, page-turning history of how a group of physicists toppled the Newtonian universe in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Marie Curie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein didn’t only revolutionise physics; they redefined our world and the reality we live in. In The Age of Uncertainty, Tobias Hürter brings to life the golden age of physics and its dazzling, flawed, and unforgettable heroes and heroines.
The work of the twentieth century’s most important physicists produced scientific breakthroughs that led to an entirely new view of physics — and a view of the universe that is still not fully understood today, even as evidence for its accuracy is all around us. The men and women who made these discoveries were intellectual adventurers, renegades, dandies, and nerds, some bound together by deep friendship; others, by bitter enmity. But the age of relativity theory and quantum mechanics was also the age of wars and revolutions. The discovery of radioactivity transformed science, but also led to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout The Age of Uncertainty, Hürter reminds us about the entanglement of science and world events, for we cannot observe the world without changing it.
‘Remarkable … Hürter treats his subjects like the cast in a nail-bitingly enthralling drama … A stark reminder that epic thrillers aren’t always found in the fiction section.’
Jane Graham, Big Issue
‘Highlights the work of Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others did together to shake up physics and introduce quantum mechanics, arguing that the field’s discovery was a collaborative effort.’
Publishers Weekly
View all reviews
‘Hürter guides us through the time when physicists developed their fundamental theories.’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
‘[The Age of Uncertainty's] great strength lies in the way Tobias Hürter brings together the cast of driven, gifted and all-too-human scientists who upended Newtonian physics, showing how the dynamics between them spurred their discoveries. Quantum mechanics is made accessible to the general reader through key moments in the scientists’ careers, such as Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, Einstein’s theory of relativity and Niels Bohr’s model of the atom, culminating in the race to produce an atomic bomb.’
Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp, The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Hürter makes the history of this important period in science and beyond highly readable … It is also an extremely interesting history on the personal and political level … Highly recommended for those with an interest in science and the people who did it.’
Tim Mendham, The Skeptic
