Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos: Writings on Science by Jeremy Bernstein

Bernstein is the author of a good many books and a good many scientific profiles for the New Yorker, a literary form that he claims to have invented. I'm not sure that I'd completely accept that- Berton Rouche's "Annals of Medicine" series for that magazine seem to have predated him- but that aside, Bernstein is still one of the best popular science writers around. He is a master of the New Yorker style, having been trained by that magazine's great editor William Shawn. Bernstein also has a deep understanding of modern science missing from some of the modern writers of popular accounts, and he lets the story tell itself, rather than taking the lazy route of adding stylistic affectations to add interest to a poorly told story. His profiles of some of the greatest physicists of the modern era, like Mach, Bohr and Schroedinger, really clarify for the lay reader what it was about the accomplishments of these men that gave them their place in history.

Bernstein is one of that small set of people who are both scientists and have written for the New Yorker. This books is a collection of essays on scientists. In addition to to more 'regular' ones about Bohr, Einstein, Mach and Turing, there are stories about Edwin Land and Sonya Kowalewsky. The tale of how Tom Lehrer, Harvard math graduate student, actually got his songs to market caught me by surprise. And I had no idea Primo Levi had been in a concentration camp. This book's focus is more on the people who make science than the actual science itself. It is not a flippant biography or collection of anecdotes by any means, but a solid (well --- as solid as you can be in twenty pages per person) well balanced description of various scientists. The author's science/writing experience allows him to avoid being condescending, bloated or abstruse. More than mere journalism, this book gives a real flavor of the lives of scientists.

I have read this book four times in three years. The article on Ms Sophia Kowalevsky is very moving and an indicator to posterity that genuinely knowledgable persons get their due recognition even after eons after their death. The article on Primo Levi is a fitting tribute to a man who had Chemistry in his blood. The first article on Einestein during the period 1900-1905 revolves around one man fighting the Scientific community which thought the end of progress of Science. A must read for any lay person. There is a possibility of your getting addicted to the Bernstein's writings. I got addicted and read his new book " A Theory for Everything".

Jeremy Bernstien is an antidote for all the fluffy modern books that attempt to convey concepts in a style that seesm to be mostly entertainment and little content. Bernstien is a practicisng physicist who writes in addition to his teaching and research, rather than a writer who happens to write about science. And having done his apprenticeship under William Shawn at The New Yorker, Bernstein has an elegant, spare style, although he does seem to rely on a few literary devices excessively from time to time. But no matter. Bernstein not only knows physics, he knows phsyicists as well, and gives us a rare insight into the lives of pivotal figures like Einstein, Mach, Yang, Schroedinger, Levi and others. His piece on Primo Levi, who took up writing after having established himself first as a scientist, and in whose life Bernstein sees parallels with his own, is especially moving and incisive. Bernstein does perhaps have a bit of an inflated notion of his place in the pantheon of science writers. He states that he created the "scientific profile" with his New Yorker pieces, while I would maintain that his writing, good as it is, is far cry from the medical pieces done by Berton Rouche and certainly the marvelous John McPhee pieces on geology, both of which make Bernstien look a bit mannered and amateurish by comparison. But these are masters- McPhee especially- who have devoted their lives to mastering the craft of writing, and Bernstien is still in the top echelon of those writing about science for the non scientist.