Epstein Secrets

at MIT, and head of its Program in Science, Technology & Society. He is the author of How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival and American Physics and the Cold War Bubble (forthcoming). In The Sleepwalkers, a sweeping history of scientific thought from ancient times

ke with different colors of algae, so it’s a very dramatic straight line. There’s a road in Australia that’s long and straight. There’s a railroad in Siberia that’s long, and lights go on when a train stops at the stations. So from space you can see straight lines and patterns. But are these clear enough

at MIT, and head of its Program in Science, Technology & Society. He is the author of How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival and American Physics and the Cold War Bubble (forthcoming). In The Sleepwalkers, a sweeping history of scientific thought from ancient times

ke with different colors of algae, so it’s a very dramatic straight line. There’s a road in Australia that’s long and straight. There’s a railroad in Siberia that’s long, and lights go on when a train stops at the stations. So from space you can see straight lines and patterns. But are these clear enough

e. In 1918, when Fermi graduated from high school in Rome, the possi- bilities open to a brilliant young scientific mind were far less constrained. Quantum mechanics had just been born, new ideas were everywhere, and the rigorous mathematics necessary to deal with these ideas had not yet been developed

ortant experiments, using simple approaches that yielded immediate results. After an "involuntary vacation" of five years, as a prisoner of war in Siberia during the First World War, Bothe returned and built a remark- able collaboration with Geiger, eventually succeeding him as director of the laborato