The bubbles were swirling all around me, massaging my body. As I luxuriated in this fantastic bath, I gasped realizing that those bubbles carried with them miniature galaxies bringing the entire Cosmos into my bathtub... Alfie is back. And so are George and other characters from the author’s previous book Einstein’s Enigma or Black Holes in My Bubble Bath. While the present book, Univers…
The development of nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant scientific events of the twentieth century. This revised and updated 3rd edition explores the challenges that faced the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project. It gives a clear introduction to fission weapons at the level of an upper-year undergraduate physics student by examining the detai…
This biography provides a stimulating and coherent blend of scientific and personal narratives describing the many achievements of the theoretical physicist Herbert Fröhlich. For more than half a century, Fröhlich was an internationally renowned and much respected figure who exerted a decisive influence, often as a ‘man ahead of his time’, in fields as diverse as meson theory and biology.…
This book provides an overview of the confluence of ideas in Turing’s era and work and examines the impact of his work on mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. It combines contributions by well-known scientists on the history and philosophy of computability theory as well as on generalised Turing computability. By looking at the roots and at the philosophical and technical infl…
Over the last forty years, scientists have uncovered evidence that if the Universe had been forged with even slightly different properties, life as we know it - and life as we can imagine it - would be impossible. Join us on a journey through how we understand the Universe, from its most basic particles and forces, to planets, stars and galaxies, and back through cosmic history to the birth of …
E.F.F. Chladni’s experiments and observations with sound and vibrations profoundly influenced the development of the field of Acoustics. The famous Chladni diagrams along with other observations are contained in Die Akustik, published in German in 1802 and Traité d’Acoustique, a greatly expanded version, published in French in 1809. This is the first comprehensive translation of the expand…
This book offers an original and informative view of the development of fundamental concepts of computability theory. The treatment is put into historical context, emphasizing the motivation for ideas as well as their logical and formal development. In Part I the author introduces computability theory, with chapters on the foundational crisis of mathematics in the early twentieth century, and f…
It is not always clear what computer programs mean in the various languages in which they can be written, yet a picture can be worth 1000 words, a diagram 1000 instructions. In this unique textbook/reference, programs are drawn as string diagrams in the language of categories, which display a universal syntax of mathematics (Computer scientists use them to analyze the program semantics; prog…
This book celebrates the work of Don Pigozzi on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In addition to articles written by leading specialists and his disciples, it presents Pigozzi’s scientific output and discusses his impact on the development of science. The book both catalogues his works and offers an extensive profile of Pigozzi as a person, sketching the most important events, not only relat…
This monograph presents the latest findings from a long-term research project intended to identify the physics behind Quantum Mechanics. A fundamental theory for quantum mechanics is constructed from first physical principles, revealing quantization as an emergent phenomenon arising from a deeper stochastic process. As such, it offers the vibrant community working on the foundations of quantum …