Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction by John C. Polkinghorne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The book is just as the title says: A Very Short Introduction to Quantum Theory. Why in heaven’s name did I choose to read such a thing? One, I love the word quantum. Two, I’m a biologist and tried to avoid physics and math most of my life (despite having taught physics and math while I was a teacher for 2 years in the Peace Corps), so I figured it was time I tried wrapping my head around something as complex as this. Three, it was on one of those shelves on which the librarians place books they think passing perusers might find interesting. In my case, their advertisement worked.

This is a tight little book. Along the way you’ll be reunited with familiar people such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, George Thompson, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, David Bohm, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac. And you’ll meet terms you may or may not have had reason to use in normal, pleasant, everyday conversation such as quarks, gluons, fractals, decoherence, eigenvectors and eigenvalues, vector spaces, matrix mechanics, and wave mechanics. You’ll have no choice but to learn about the GRW Theory, positivism and realism, γ-rays, the uncertainty principle, and the superposition principle.

This is an engaging, well-written, interesting little book. By reading it, in just a couple hours you’ll be smarter than all your neighbors. At least when it comes to quantum theory and the history of physics.



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