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book reviews autistic) child has the strong need to be Feynman one day in 1940 or 1941, and said characterizes retrospective accounts of the accepted by the peer , to fit in and to (more or less), “Feynman, I know why all , no pretending that everyone was belong. The case of autism starkly reminds us and all have the same on wonderful terms, that issues of national what happens when the normal brain circuits charge.” Why? “Because there’s only one security were sidebars to the ‘real world’ of for social development malfunction, and and it travels back and forth in . No, Wheeler remembers Oppen- how this affects not just the child’s accent, but .” In Feynman’s hands this idea became heimer as a concatenation of brilliance and also their assimilation into culture. a foundation of electrodynamics unstraightforward show-off. “My feelings Simon Baron-Cohen is in the Departments of in 1947–49. When the ‘no fields’ campaign toward him remain as they were more than 60 Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry, faltered, Wheeler reversed course and years ago,” he says. “Oppenheimer was a , Cambridge fought on the opposite front, to reduce complex human being. I never felt really CB2 3EB, UK. physics to fields without particles. When close to him. I always felt I had to keep my Wheeler wanted to explore the limits of guard up.” gravitational physics, he took Robert He speaks warmly of Teller, yet does not Oppenheimer’s 1939 speculations about hesitate to criticize him. Nor does Wheeler A singularity in black holes and pushed farther, doing ignore his own failings, such as his attach- physics at the extremity of the then quies- ment to an idealized picture of Germany that modern cent of . may have delayed the launch of Los Alamos Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Kenneth Ford has kept Wheeler’s voice. It — without that delay, he believes, his Foam: A Life in Physics is a voice of striking honesty. There is none of brother might not have died on the battle- by with the pretty glossing-over that so often field. Wheel- Kenneth Ford er says: “I W. W. Norton: 1998. 380 pp. $27.95, £19.95 was inclined CHIVES to believe [as Werner AL AR In the twentieth century theatre of physics, Heisenberg John Wheeler has stood at centre stage but did] that always just out of the spotlight. He worked an immoral with on the theory of nuclear fis- dictatorship sion in 1939 and on the was a tran- during the Second World War, and launched sitory evil, on the quest that led him something a Y BISHOP/AIP EMILIO SEGRÉ VISU to . Alongside great nation could endure O , Wheeler helped to make without lasting harm. Of course, I was R thermonuclear weapons a in the late wrong. So was Heisenberg, who never open- 1940s and early 1950s. From black holes to ly opposed the Nazi regime.” quantum measurement, from positronium What is for Wheeler? to the collective model of the nucleus, It is a search to unify experience and at the Wheeler transformed an astonishing range same time to prosecute aesthetic concerns. of physics. “From the calculations and experiments that In a sadly conformist age, as herds of we call the nitty-gritty of our science to the theorists thunder to one rumoured oasis most encompassing questions of philo- after another, Wheeler has somehow main- sophy, there is one unbroken chain of tained a quirky, intuitive, insightful style that connection. There is no definable point is truly his own. There simply has been no along this chain where the truly curious one like him — he is and has always been a can say, ‘I go only this far and pragmatic visionary. no farther’.” Pragmatic: Wheeler grew up an Ameri- After the Second World War, most Amer- can boy who liked inventions and explosives. ican turned away from interpreta- He was a theorist who, more than most of the tive problems of quantum , other physicists at the wartime Metallurgical shunting aside the great arguments launched Lab in Chicago, ended up working well and by Bohr and Einstein in the 1930s over the learning easily from the DuPont engineers. meaning of measurement. Not Wheeler. Visionary: Bohr’s institute in Sometimes the goal was simply to augment was about as far from American physics as it understanding, as it was during his early could be — a place where Bohr and his young involvement with Hugh Everett in the estab- associates agonized for days over getting the lishment of the ‘many worlds’ interpretation words, the physics and the philosophy right of — a view that con- all at once. What comes through in Geons, tinues to attract attention from both physi- Black Holes, and is just how cists and . thoroughly, how improbably, how impor- Wheeler is a powerful singularity in tantly Wheeler joined these American and twentieth-century physics. If this book helps European impulses. remind us of that, it will have accomplished a Wheeler liked to work at the extremes. great good thing. Could physics be done without fields — a Peter Galison is in the Department of History of world of particles alone? That became a Science and Department of Physics, Science Center long-standing project. But even that wasn’t Where next? Wheeler has stood at the crossroads 235, , Cambridge, extreme enough. So Wheeler called up of physics and explored diverse directions. Massachusetts 02138, USA.

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