Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War 1st Edition

As someone who majored in Physics in college, then went on to become a Historian in grad school, I am a tough critic when it comes to books on science or history. Therefore, it's not lightly that I recommend this entertaining, emotional, and insightful biography.Max Planck was a genius, and also a man who lived through tragedy and chaos. He was the originator of Quantum Theory and he also outlived four of his children. He was friends with Einstein and Lise Meitner and yet he lived in Germany during Hitler's reign. (Not to mention his son Erwin would eventually be arrested and put on trial by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof.) Though I was familiar with Planck because of Planck's Law and Planck's Constant, which I had to use in many college era computations, I had no idea until this book that he lived such a colorful and turbulent life.And more subtly, though perhaps the best part of the book, Planck's personality is revealed. The book provides an all too rare personal glimpse of one of the rare, brilliant men who revolutionized Physics. It reveals him to be a humorous man who loved hikes, a man who was an affectionate father, a lover of music and long chats with friends, and yet also a man hardened by tragedy and Hitler's Germany which were trials he was not spared in his later years. And all throughout, he remained Planck, a man whose mobile and brilliant mind continued to grasp and forward the slipperiest notions of modern physics.Brandon Brown has written a lucid and engaging book that has something for everyone. Science, World War II, an individual who is brilliant, moral, and sorely tried--this biography has it all. Highly recommended.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” That’s a quote from Max Planck that I came across a couple of months ago on an Internet post I wanted to know more and started reading about him on the Internet. He won the Nobel Prize, was a good friend of Albert Einstein, and came up with “quantum theory.” Now mathematics was always my Achilles’ heel, and I was intimidated from even trying to understand physics. But his ideas intrigued me, so I thought I’d try this biography by Brandon R. Brown. I’m glad I did. Believe it or not, I actually now have a vague idea of what Quantum Theory is. This is a good book for the layman. Max Planck’s life had a lot of tragedy. Those closest to him died young. The heaviest loss for him to bear was the execution of his son, who was implicated in the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler. I found Planck a very civilized man caught in an increasingly uncivilized world. He was a loyal German who believed that Hitler was a temporary thing to get through. Even though this book is very far out of my usual milieu, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and learned a lot, too. I have a couple of complaints: 1) his annoying use of the feminine pronoun every time he made a general statement. It was distracting and only pointed out how politically correct Brown and his publishers are. It didn’t add anything to the information except to insert social politics into another subject. 2) The story is not completely linear. Brown jumps back and forth in time. Sometimes he’d be talking about “the war” and I would think World War I, but then a page later, I’d realize he was talking about World War II. This happened several times. But all in all, I’d say this is a very good book and I’m glad I read it. Be sure to read the appendix, “A Modern Look at the Thermal Radiation Spectrum.” I found it fascinating and informative. Brown does a very good job of explaining some very complex things for those of us who are not very math-and-science-oriented. Four stars.

Well written biography of a great physicist little known to those outside science . Brown does a good job capturing the human side of Planck especially his dilemma in dealing with Hitler and the anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany. I would have liked more in-depth discussion of his great contributions to physics. His scientific persona seemed incomplete to me.