Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe

Wow. This is some book. Unlike many books that describe the evolution of modern cosmological theory, this one is dedicated to the understanding of physics itself, both its history and it's collation of knowledge about reality. Through the course of the text, the history of discoveries in physics is described, giving all contributors from Aristarchis, Galileo and Newton, to Einstein, Feynman and Guth, among others, their just due. That it has been a globe effort is evident from the source nationalities of these intellects, as diverse as Scotland and Japan. The narration clearly illustrates that good science is the result of the cumulative efforts of many different individuals, from many different cultures throughout history. Interesting too is that the book's basic starting point is the intellectual contribution of a brilliant female mathemation, Amalia Noether, working at about the same time and in the same country as the better known Einstein. It is her theory of symmetry in physics, worked out in mathematical theorems, that created a major connecting link between physics and mathematics. Although the book is not in depth enough to actually make her contribution clearer than "Noether's Theorum," her discoveries are obviously at the core of the entire movement in modern physics. It's nice to know that my old high school math teacher, who so disparaged the math abilities of his female students was wrong, wrong, wrong. The book is well conceived in its presentation of the information. It begins with the earliest efforts of the ancient Greeks and Romans to understand the workings of nature. Their concepts, sometimes startlingly close to the truth, served as the starting point for later researchers. The character of physics as a discipline is presented from a Newtonian perspective in the earlier portions of the book, and I have to say, while it does not bog one down in detailed formulae, it makes much more sense of basic physics than many books do. The next few chapters deal with Einstein and Bohr, relativity and quantum mechanics. Probably no other book I've read on these subjects has done as good a job of pulling the whole thing together; particularly the authors manage to connect the concepts of Newtonian and modern physics more clearly for the reader. While many books have attempted to do this, often it seems as though the authors make the assumption that the reader will see how the two are connected and hop from one topic to the next without connecting comments. Lederman and Hill put the entire thing out there for the student, assuming that it is not obvious how the two are connected. This description is in fact the bulk of the book. The last pages of the book are dedicated to a detailed description of the more recent contributions to physics, particularly the theories relating to sub-atomic particles and their interactions and the concepts behind the Feynman diagrams. I have to admit that this aspect of physics has a

If you've heard about symmetry and the beauty of physics and wondered what it was all about, this may well be the book for you. In ordinary English, the word "symmetry" refers to something fairly simple. For example, suppose you have a picture of a 6-pointed star and draw a line from one angle to the opposite angle; if you flip the picture about that line, it will still look the same. This book has a more inclusive definitiion of symmetry. Imagine you have a graph of a circle with its center at the origin. Imagine overlaying it with a blank graph on clear plastic, with the origin at a different place and the axes tilted. The graph is still a circle and that, to Lederman and Hill, is a symmetry. Suppose that instead of a circle, the graph is of a formula which represents some physical phenomenon, with one axis representing time and the other standing for space; if the formula is still valid in the overlay, that, too, is a symmetry. Lederman and Hill do a very good of explaining all this, in much more detail, with illustrations from Emma Noether's great equivalence theorems. When they get to Chapter 8, they do a very good job of explaining mirror reflections and handedness in everyday life, but they give no hint of what this has to do with the idea of parity in particle physics, the subject of the chapter. And that's pretty much how it goes for the rest of the book, i.e. for most of 20th-century physics. I'm not complaining about that; understanding the physics requires knowledge of a few fields of rather advanced mathematics. For what they do - giving an impression of physics to non-scientists - they do better than any of the many other books and articles I have read. For example, they show how Galileo's principle or relativity connects with Einstein and why the wave equation of electrons means that their interactions must be quantized. And I recommend the appendix on group theory; it is an excellent introduction to how mathematics can be abstracted to apply to new situations. (For an idea of my math background, click on my name, above.)

This book bridges the gap between esoteric scientific concepts and the truly comprehensible. As someone fascinated by science without a strong background in it, I can truly appreciate the incredible feat of this book. Lederman takes what should be complex and makes it lucid and readable. He takes on the aesthetic of symmetry and translates it to the layman audience. This book is truly worthwhile and informative, for all readers.

We are often delighted by the sight of symmetry when we observe it in a beautiful flower, in hexagonal snowflakes, or in man-made structures such as arches or bridges. But how many of us realize that symmetries are closely related to the conservation laws of physics? Lederman and Hill, 2 well-known and practicing physicists, describe the multiple facets of this topic, discussing how symmetry in the flow of time is related to energy conservation. They use this concept as a springboard to expand upon the importance of energy in this period of our civilization with real facts and figures. The first few chapters deal with symmetries of space and time and their relation to the conservation of momentum and energy. Fascinating stories like that about perpetual motion machines abound, and there are personal vignettes like one about Amalia Noether, a young lady who discovered the deeper connection between symmetries and physical laws and still suffered trials and tribulations as a woman seeking an academic position. Hill and Lederman take on the task of describing symmetries throughout physics, from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics, all the way to modern topics of particle physics. The book is intended for readers at an advanced high-school level or non-physics majors at university. Chapter 6, for instance, gives a refreshing account of the law of inertia- how it was formulated (incorrectly) by the ancient Greeks, later to be discovered by Galileo and to become a basic postulate in the relativity theory. Relativity is expounded upon in Ch. 7, whereby full appreciation of its contents requires some guidance. Other chapters describe e.g., symmetries of quarks and leptons, which currently stimulate public imagination. This is, in fact, the intent of the authors, "...to [motivate and] convince high school science teachers to include some of the important concepts of symmetry in the core disciplines of phyics, chemistry and biology" and to use it as a text/reference book. Their purpose is well-served, especially by the many anecdotes and numerical estimates that make the book easily approachable for the reader.

One of the problems I face in teaching at a small liberal arts college is providing for our english, theatre, and music majors, a substantive introduction to modern physics. We have to get beyond the basics of heat, light and sound, and we have to talk about quarks, and black holes, relativity, the quantum theory, and the whole wonderful universe. Finally, a book has arrived that does all of this, and wonderfully unifies all of physics under its main mast of symmetry. These things captivate our students. Yet it also helps to have heros (especially some female scientist and mathematicians), and to still be a lyrical and readable account of things, but not to trivialize the subject. Finally, Professor Leon Lederman and Dr. Christopher Hill have risen to the cause. This is the first, and probably the unique, and perhaps the ultimate, attempt to reach out and fill this gap. I can't tell you how happy I am to see this book arrive. I have been using materials from their website, for years, but finally it all comes together in a book that I can assign to my students. This book is great... I repeat, it is great. It isn't easy, but it acheives so much (there are dozens of useless books popularizing science out there). The biography and theme, the life of Emmy Noether, is a perfect lead in to this immense and majestic subject. It is poignant and beautifully written. The appendix, with its humoresque student solving an SAT test problem using symmetry, is probably worth the purchase price of tuition alone. This book will hook my students, and will sit prominently on their bookshelves, in their homes, when they become lawyers, doctors, statesmen, and composers, a ready reference to all that is the mystery of nature, for the rest of their lives.