WHO Amir D. Aczel is a popular mathematician and writer on the history of mathematics and science. His many books include Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem and, most recently, The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man.
WHAT Wrinkles in Time: Witness to the Birth of the Universe, by George Smoot and Keay Davidson; The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, by Leonard Susskind; Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, by Arthur I. Miller
WHY I read different books depending on what I'm doing. When I'm on vacation, I read only fiction. But when I'm writing (as I am now), I read only science non-fiction. I've read some really excellent books recently, which I highly recommend.
George Smoot's Wrinkles in Time has got to be one of the best books I've ever read. Smoot, who got the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006, is the Indiana Jones of physics: a physicist who flies all over the world to do science. For example, he was now in French Guiana, where he went from Paris (he's based at UC Berkeley) for the launch of the latest “wrinkles in time” (microwave background radiation in space, the embers of the Big Bang) satellite, called Planck. His writing is incredible: You really get the feel of what it is like to do leading-edge science and discover so much about the universe while doing really exciting things like travel to exotic destinations in the name of science.
Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War is a very exciting read. It tells the story of Susskind's “war” with Stephen Hawking about the nature of black holes; Susskind claims to have won, and he is quite convincing about that. On the way, you learn a lot about how science is done and about the nature of usually difficult concepts such as quantum weirdness and Einstein's relativity. But he does it so it actually looks simple.
A third book I really like is the very new Deciphering the Cosmic Number, by Arthur I. Miller. This is the story of the legendary quantum pioneer Wolfgang Pauli and his relationship to Carl Jung (no math, no physics, not much psychology, just the fascinating relationship between the two men). Jung analyzed Pauli's thousands of bizarre (quantum-like) dreams. And they spent much time together looking to solve the mystery of the number 137. I dare not say more about it so as not to ruin the fun for anyone.
