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that the authors hew to the information metaphor. Breathlessly, Field and Davies survey the greatest hits and promises of genomics, including Jurassic Park-style reani- mation of extinct species, the microbiome and environmental engineering. The thin chapters blurt out strings of recent findings, each capped with a crescendo of sensational specu- lations that mostly rehearse familiar ethical questions. Critical distance is achieved with the time-honoured double negative: “Might a lawyer one day argue that deliberately not giving [our children] the best genes available is a form of abuse? It is not inconceivable to imagine a world where natural reproduction would seem primitive and even barbaric.” It concludes by exhorting us to set our sights on a global genome project to understand “the software that shapes our living planet”. The biocode is Gaia plus DNA. But two clichés do not make a right. Biocode simply extends the text metaphor to the macrocosm. The old metaphor is not wrong; it is incom- plete. In the new genome, lines of static code have become a three-dimensional tangle of vital string, constantly folding and rearrang- ing itself, responsive to outside input. The roots of this idea run deep. In her 1983 Nobel lecture, geneticist Barbara McClintock called the genome a “sensitive organ of the cell”. McClintock, who discovered mobile genetic elements in the 1940s, had named them con- myth that at first no one thought transposi- unbridled speculation and Panglossian opti- trolling elements because she thought they tion was real. The contested point was actu- mism. Junk DNA produces a lot of DNA junk. composed the regulatory system that gov- ally McClintock’s interpretation of mobile The idea that the many functions of non- erned gene action. In 1980, Ford Doolittle elements as controllers of gene action. coding DNA make the concept of junk DNA and Carmen Sapienza proposed that transpo- Parrington’s strongest chapters survey the obsolete oversells a body of research that is sons were molecular parasites, jumping into emerging view of gene regulation, includ- exciting enough. ENCODE’s claim of 80% genomes to propagate themselves. Parasitic ing DNA folding, epigenetics and regulatory functionality strikes many in the genome transposons are now textbook knowledge, but RNA. Overall, this is a faithful, engaging por- community as better marketing than science. McClintock’s larger point holds: the genome trait of the twenty-first-century genome. Still, as with McClintock, the larger point is dynamic, full of regulatory elements that Finally, Junk DNA, like the genome, is holds: the genome is more than a set of rules respond to environmental cues. crammed with repetitious elements and and parts descriptions. Finding apt imagery The Deeper Genome is the only book of superfluous text. Bite-sized chapters parade to replace the dead metaphor of the ‘instruc- the three that credits McClintock as a pro- gee-whizz moments of genomics. Carey’s The tion book of life’ could enable us to break free genitor of the three-dimensional genome. A Epigenetics Revolution (Columbia University of the cliché of nature versus nurture. It could scientist and journalist, Parrington covered Press, 2012) offered lucid science writing usher in a more democratic conception of life, the ENCODE story for The Times in 2012; and vivid imagery. Here the metaphors have in which all the world’s a cell, and all the genes his book enriches those accounts with his- been deregulated: they metastasize through and genomes merely players. ■ torical and scientific context. The science is an otherwise knowledgeable survey of non- better than the history. He provides a fine coding DNA. At one point, the reader must Nathaniel Comfort is professor of the discussion of recent support for McClintock’s run a gauntlet of baseball bats, iron discs, Vel- history of medicine at Johns Hopkins often-overlooked late work on how stress can cro and “pretty fabric flowers” to understand University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is activate transposition, but he perpetuates the “what happens when women make eggs”. The working on a biography of DNA. genome seems to provoke overheated prose, Twitter: @nccomfort NEW IN Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes PAPERBACK Svante Pääbo Basic 2015 Pioneer of ancient-DNA studies Svante Pääbo was inspired in his youth by ancient Highlights of this Egyptian history. Feeling that this field moved too slowly, he decided to study medicine season’s releases instead, and went on to sequence the first full Neanderthal genome in 2010. Here he details the technicalities of his life’s work and the incremental discoveries, such as genetic intimations that modern humans and Neanderthals had mixed, which generated our theories of human evolution. (See Henry Gee’s review: Nature 506, 30–31; 2014.)

616 | NATURE | VOL 520 | 30 APRIL 2015 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved ORIGINS OF LIFE An improbable journey Adrian Woolfson enjoys two studies on microbial life’s trek towards complexity.

n 1676, the Dutch merchant and amateur rise to bacteria and archaea, which have no The Vital Question: Why is Life the Way it is? scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek sub- nucleus or other sub-cellular organelles. NICK LANE mitted an essay to the Royal Society of The evolutionary engine of life then seems Profile: 2015. ILondon detailing a singular discovery. This to have got stuck, idling along at the unicel- Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth was the world of unicellular organisms, lular level for another 2 billion to 3 billion Habitable which he observed using a self-designed years. Falkowski explains how unicellu- PAUL G. FALKOWSKI microscope. Three hundred years later, lar organisms, although morphologically Princeton Univ. Press: 2015. Leeuwenhoek’s “animalcules” were shown challenged, managed to perfect the basic to hold the secret to the evolution of complex biochemical ‘engines’ that would power all ancestral archaean host engulfed a small life on Earth. forms of life on Earth. According to Lane, population of symbiotic bacteria, resulting In his imaginative and beautifully written the stagnation occurred because the molec- in the first eukaryotic cell, the forebear of The Vital Question, evolutionary biochem- ular motors that drive the biochemistry of complex life. ist Nick Lane defines a genealogy that links bacteria and archaea were unable to cross Lane recounts how over time, the engulfed the descendants of the Cambrian explosion the energetic threshold necessary for the bacteria jettisoned most of their genes that — the first appearance of morphologically evolution of complex form. This energetic were unrelated to energy production; these complex animals in the fossil record, were either lost permanently or relo- about 540 million years ago — to the cated to the cell nucleus. There they simple organisms that preceded them. continued to fulfil their original func- In so doing, he persuades us that com- THE EVOLUTIONARY ENGINE tions, or formed the raw material for prehending the structure, function, the evolution of new genes with unex- behaviour, genetics and evolution of GOT STUCK, pected roles, such as transcription fac- microorganisms is necessary for a tors — proteins that bind to DNA. This deep understanding of complex life, IDLING ALONG AT THE allowed embryonic stem cells to be and of the processes that undermine it, patterned in three-dimensional space. including diseases and ageing. This vis- UNICELLULAR LEVEL. What remained of the imbibed bacte- ceral insight into the largely uncharted ria, with their pared-down genomes expanses of microbial existence could and surrounding membranes, became also form the basis of a predictive science constraint on life is the central focus of The energy-generating mitochondria. The acqui- enabling us to speculate about the nature of Vital Question. sition of these organelles enabled eukaryotic potential life on other planets. It derives, Lane explains, from two princi- cells to expand their volume by up to 15,000 Biophysicist Paul Falkowski’s entertain- pal design features that all living things use times that of the average bacterium, and to ing, easy-to-read and historically rich Life’s to power themselves. The first is the use of support a genome around 5,000 times larger. Engines, meanwhile, uses the work of micro- high-energy molecules of ATP, the chemi- Lane’s important realization is that this also biologist Carl Woese to trace complex life cal currency of energy transfer. The second gifted eukaryotic cells with about 200,000 back to its three lines of descent: bacteria, is the idiosyncratic ‘chemiosmotic’ force, times more energy per gene than the aver- archaea and eukaryotes. By studying the which moves protons and facilitates the age prokaryotic cell. This over-cranking RNA sequences of ribosomes — the cellular continuous generation of ATP. Both Lane of the evolutionary engine allowed for the machines that make proteins — Woese was and Falkowski describe these molecular development of a baroque diversity in the able to show that Charles Darwin was cor- processes compellingly. Although adequate nature and extent of cellular gene and pro- rect in suggesting that all life arose from a to power single bacteria-sized cells, the tein expression. single, now-extinct, common ancestor. method constrains the allowable surface- Although readily accommodated by It remains unclear how and when life first to-volume ratio of a living cell. Lane argues, classic Darwinian evolutionary theory, the originated on Earth, but we know that the however, that around 1.5 billion years ago horizontal, sudden and co-operative nature first unicellular organism emerged between this energetic constraint was overcome by of Lane’s evolutionary narrative differs from 3.6 billion and 2.7 billion years ago, giving an improbable endosymbiosis event: an the incremental, vertical and competitive

The Homing Instinct: Meaning and Mystery in The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Animal Migration Human Evolution Bernd Heinrich Mariner 2015 Henry Gee Univ. Chicago University Press 2015 Erudite naturalist Bernd Heinrich attributes the Nature’s palaeontology editor, Henry Gee, instinct for migration to an affinity for ‘home’, from condemns the idea that our species is the beavers’ skilful dam-building to the joyful dance of pinnacle of evolution, arguing that traits prized as Alaskan cranes returned to their nesting pond. (See uniquely human, such as creativity, are not. (See Joel Greenberg’s review: Nature 508, 317; 2014.) Tim Radford’s review: Nature 503, 34–35; 2013.)

features of the more canonical one. As elegant as the details underpinning the thesis seem, it is occasionally hard to distinguish between fact and speculation. Lane has, nevertheless, made a bold and commendable attempt to sketch out a highly challenging scientific issue for a general audience. In so doing, he has reaffirmed the importance of a largely overlooked area of basic research, and has generated testable hypotheses about the origins of complex life. Falkowski covers some of the same details of the evolution of microbes and their contribution to complexity, including the historical origins of the concept of endosymbiosis. However, his focus is primarily on how microorganisms have made Earth habitable, perhaps most notably with the development of oxygen-generating photosynthesis by cyanobacteria. This leads him to touch on humanity’s potential to undermine Earth’s systems. History has shown how modifications to microbial biochemistry affect global geophysical processes. For example, following 200 million to 300 million years of VIROLOGY photosynthesis by ancient microorganisms, oxygen became a significant com- ponent of Earth’s atmosphere, increasing ozone levels, reducing the greenhouse Journal of the effects of gases such as methane and leading to one of the most extensive glacia- tions in the planet’s history. Humanity’s interference with natural biological pro- plague years cesses risks damaging Earth in ways that cannot be predicted. What is clear is that a deep understand- Mark Dybul applauds the latest chapter in an account of ing of how complex life originated will a life at the leading edge of HIV research and policy. provide insights into human biology and the nature of disease processes. It may also enable the generation of forms irologist Peter Piot’s AIDS Between Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). of life unconstrained by the contingent Science and Politics is a terrific follow- Three messages underpin the book’s nine processes that locked life into its current up to his highly acclaimed memoir chapters. One is that the HIV epidemic gen- trajectory. Life as we know it may eventu- VNo Time to Lose (W. W. Norton, 2012). It erated an unprecedented local and global ally be supplanted, perhaps one day even demonstrates the deep intellectual lessons of response, recast many development and being viewed as a primordial soup that a lifetime at the cutting edge of science and health paradigms, and ultimately triggered facilitated the emergence of silicon-based politics. Piot’s narrative ranges from his thrill- treatments that have saved millions of lives. existence. ■ ing, on-the-ground experiences in remote The second is that progress was made only regions of Africa as a young scientist and when various scientific disciplines, on- Adrian Woolfson is the author of Life member of the team that identified Ebola, the-ground implementation strategies and Without Genes. to the high-altitude reflections of his years as politics were aligned. And the third? That e-mail: [email protected] executive director of the Joint United Nations AIDS is not over.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Naomi Klein Allen Lane 2015 Energy Revolution and Changed the World Unafraid to name and shame fossil-fuel junkies Russell Gold Simon and Schuster 2015 hooked on a billion-dollar industry, Naomi Klein Journalist Russell Gold traces the rise of fracking, investigates capitalism and climate change. She sees a tale of innovation and investment — such as the global crisis as a potential spur to positive action, ex-oilman Aubrey McClendon’s 260,000 land as happened with the women’s rights movement. acquisitions in Texas’s Barnett Shale. (See Chris (See Nico Stehr’s review: Nature 513, 312; 2014.) Nelder’s review: Nature 508, 185; 2014.)

and they are intimately linked owing to social elements, and the discrimination and stigma they engender — what Piot calls the challenge of “sex, drugs and rock and roll”. Data, modelling and advocacy were essen- tial to move national and global politics, but political leadership also drove a demand for scientific advance, data and results. At a national level, Piot praises former president of Botswana Festus Mogae for his personal leadership in declaring, in 2001, that HIV was a threat to his country’s existence. Mogae dedicated significant national resources to antiretroviral therapy at a time when much of the global health community scoffed at the viability of such a programme in Africa. These moves were strengthened by an alliance with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and with pharmaceutical giant Merck, creating what Piot deems perhaps the most successful and impactful public–private partnership in history. At the global level, Piot singles out the push by then-UN secretary- general Kofi Annan for the creation of the Global Fund, and George W. Bush’s efforts towards the inauguration of PEPFAR. Piot is honest about failures. He cites an Piot observes that People with the virus rallied to fight for atten- effort he pioneered in the mid-2000s to HIV is one of the most tion and resources, with increasing energy engage the US and European pharmaceutical devastating plagues in and sophistication. Remarkable individual industries in expanding access to antiretro history, reducing life and community action effected a breath viral treatment for people in low-income expectancy in coun- taking shift from a paternalistic, government- countries. The opposition came from a tries such as Botswana only approach to development and health, diverse group of people and institutions, by around 30% — and to one in which partnership and inclusivity including academics and political activists, wiping out decades provided a more effective response. who feared that participation by the pharma- of gains in health and From such a heady climate were born ceutical industry would be geared towards development. Even in AIDS Between the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis increasing profits, not expanding access. places that have not Science and and Malaria in 2002 and the US President’s He is also clear about the need to remain been affected on that Politics Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) focused and vigilant. In his view, the epi- PETER PIOT national scale, it has Columbia Univ. Press: in 2003, both aiming to provide funding for demic could be significantly reduced with devastated groups of 2015. programmes in countries most affected by the sufficient resources, channelled to where the most marginal- diseases. Perhaps of even greater significance they would make the most difference. This ized and vulnerable people, including men was the growth of multisectoral local institu- is the heavy baton that has been picked up by who have sex with men, transgender people, tions, including national AIDS councils in Piot’s successor at UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé. people who inject drugs, sex workers, prison- dozens of countries, often reporting to the AIDS Between Science and Politics is a ers and others. Piot also points out the links head of state. And there has been an increase must-read for anyone interested in the HIV/ with historical injustices such as the 1948–94 of billions of dollars in domestic financing for AIDS epidemic. More broadly, it offers les- apartheid in South Africa, where the social HIV/AIDS response. As a result, many mil- sons — and interesting anecdotes — useful fabric was so badly damaged and the mistrust lions of lives have been saved and lifted up. in the response to Ebola and indeed to every of the authorities grew so deep that it exacer- The theme of effective partnerships that challenge in global health and development. ■ bated the outbreak of the epidemic. span disciplines, politics and theologies Piot traces the early days of the response to (religious, scientific and otherwise) per- Mark Dybul is executive director of the HIV/AIDS, when governments closed their meates the book, and is reflected in its title. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis ears and wallets to the growing epidemic. The science is complex, as are the politics, and Malaria in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World After Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty an Apocalypse of the World’s Most Remote Places Lewis Dartnell Vintage 2015 Roger Lovegrove Oxford Univ. Press 2015 In a post-apocalyptic world, could we rebuild In his profile of inaccessible islands, Roger civilization? Lewis Dartnell condenses millennia of Lovegrove’s admiration for wildlife shines. But achievement into a handbook on mastering Earth’s from Russia’s ice-locked Wrangel Island, where resources to produce food, energy and medicines polar bears banquet on walruses, to the Pacific using our “greatest invention”: science. Tuamotus, few such idylls remain pristine.

MEDICAL HISTORY Pioneer of polio eradication

Tilli Tansey extols a biography of determined of Pittsburgh in Pennsylva- vaccine trailblazer Jonas Salk. nia. Harry Weaver, research director of the National Foundation for Infantile n 12 April tenacity that shaped Paralysis (NFIP), invited 1955, across both his scientific him to work on typ- the United success and his pro- ing polio viruses and, OStates, “church bells fessional difficulties. eager for space, staff tolled, horns honked, Early on, at the New and equipment, Salk and sirens rang” in York University Col- accepted. He made rapid celebration: the larg- lege of Medicine, Salk progress, refining and est clinical trial ever worked with influenza replacing contemporary undertaken had expert Thomas Francis. methodologies — often in the reported that the first Jonas Salk: A Life At the time, antiviral vaccines face of criticism or even prohibi- polio vaccine was safe CHARLOTTE DECROES (against smallpox, rabies and yellow tion from the NFIP advisory commit- JACOBS and effective. So writes Oxford Univ. Press: fever) used artificially weakened live virus. tee. Weaver supported his protégé, and the Charlotte Jacobs in 2015. Salk and Francis developed an experimental foundation came to see Salk as its ‘poster her riveting biogra- technique that used killed virus to stimulate scientist’, wheeled out for public and media phy of the vaccine’s discoverer, Jonas Salk. antibody production and confer immunity, events. Fellow researchers continued to carp. Two years earlier, poliomyelitis had killed suggesting a powerful therapeutic approach. Undeterred, Salk pioneered a killed-virus or paralysed almost 36,000 US children. It In 1941, Salk followed Francis to Michi- vaccine and organized safety testing and has been estimated that before the vaccine gan, pursuing the holy grail — an influenza field trials. Those leading up to the 1955 there were 600,000 cases a year worldwide. vaccine. He modified laborious procedures announcement involved more than 1.5 mil- Salk’s triumph made him a global household to culture the virus and develop vaccine pro- lion children, tens of thousands of doctors name, and the gongs began rolling in. duction, usually with only gloves and a mask and nurses, and 220,000 volunteers. The As Jacobs shows, the tale of Salk’s discovery as protection. He supervised clinical tests on clamour attendant on success (a film was is one of grind, intrigue, rivalry, politics and patients at two psychiatric institutions, delib- mooted, to star Marlon Brando) laid Salk dirty tricks. Add commercial interests (phar- erately infecting some with influenza — a open to charges of self-aggrandisement. maceutical giant Eli Lilly made US$30 mil- practice common until the Nuremberg Code Almost immediately, problems arose. lion from polio vaccine in 1955 alone) and of 1947 offered some protection to human Batches of vaccine became contaminated, Salk’s extramarital entanglements while research subjects — and in 1945 advised the and physicians inoculated family and friends wedded to artist (and muse to Pablo Picasso) US surgeon general to vaccinate 8 million while leaving first-grade children, the most Françoise Gilot, and the mix becomes even soldiers. Without consulting Francis, Salk vulnerable group, unprotected. Over a few headier. Jacobs contextualizes the polio effort signed an exclusive contract with pharma- months, 260 individuals contracted polio with Salk’s work on influenza, multiple scle- ceutical firm Parke, Davis to provide details directly or indirectly from a single substand- rosis and HIV/AIDS — and with the Salk of production methods that he devised. This ard preparation. Several states suspended Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, departure from academic etiquette did not vaccination. Massachusetts halted its pro- California, which he created and directed, go unnoticed; nor did his writing for non- gramme when children had received only the and from which he was ultimately excluded. professional publications such as Parents first of three shots; in July 1955, some 4,000 Growing up in the Bronx, New York, in a Magazine. Tensions grew as Francis received contracted polio and 1,700 were paralysed. family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Salk honours, while Salk was ignored. Salk was unfairly associated with these errors was dominated by his ambitious mother. He In 1947, Jacobs recounts, Salk left to and was castigated, especially by scientific came to crave doing things his own way — a establish an influenza lab at the University colleagues. However, tighter adherence to his

Water 4.0 The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons David Sedlak Yale Univ. Press 2015 Sam Kean Black Swan 2015 From Roman aqueducts to desalinization plants, Crammed with curious anecdotes from David Sedlak’s study overflows with facts about neuroscience’s gory past, Sam Kean’s book water management. Chlorine by-products could ranges from the crude methods of early brain be carcinogens, so he argues that water treatment studies (including the beheading of criminals to needs another upgrade. (See Margaret Catley- use as test subjects) to the prion disease kuru, Carlson’s review: Nature 505, 288–289; 2014.) which spreads through cannibalism.

620 | NATURE | VOL 520 | 30 APRIL 2015 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved SPRING BOOKS COMMENT protocols and resumption of vaccination meant that six years after the vaccine was introduced, polio was almost eradicated in the United States. Much of the scientific establishment closed ranks against Salk. He was given the prestigious Lasker Award for clinical medical research in 1956, but Swedish virologist Sven Gard dealt his Nobel nomination a fatal blow by sneering that the vaccine was a technical advance, not a discovery. Nor was Salk elected to the US National Acad- emy of Sciences. Virologist Albert Sabin — bombastic, imperious and galled by Salk’s success — continued to develop a live, orally delivered poliovirus preparation. By 1961, Sabin’s vaccine had performed well in trials and the American Medical Asso- ciation began to promote it. Salk’s vaccine was, for a time, superseded, and his efforts to improve its potency stymied. Salk moved on, although he remained involved with the polio vaccine. Influenced by chemist C. P. Snow’s 1959 book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, he launched a research institute integrating social responsibility and the humanities with the biological sciences. The Salk Insti- tute recruited some of the great biologists of the time, including Jacob Bronowski, Francis Crick and Jacques Monod. But Salk was unable to translate his lofty ideals into practical management. His research from the 1960s onwards, on immune responses in cancer, multiple sclerosis and, PHYSICS later, HIV/AIDS, met with ambivalence. He was increasingly derided by the very scientists whom he had recruited. In many ways, Salk was ahead of his One hundred years of time, notably in public engagement and in his multidisciplinary agenda. A polio vaccine would have emerged without him, general relativity but it was his vision and willpower that produced the first, and a descendant of it Pedro Ferreira looks back at how Einstein himself and a is still the basis of many public-health pro- panoply of other physicists have framed the theory. grammes. Yet universal polio eradication remains a dream: cases continue to appear in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, and ntil very recently, relativists were universes and black holes, you were left to have resurged in recent years in Syria. ■ few and often self-taught. General your own devices. That is what happened relativity still had the stigma of to me. Tilli Tansey is professor of the history of Ubeing esoteric, pointless and, well, hard. I studied engineering and did not enjoy modern medical sciences at Queen Mary, In some places you could find special- it very much. But during the course on University of London. ized graduate courses, but on the whole, electromagnetism, I discovered Albert e-mail: [email protected] if you were at all interested in expanding Einstein’s world of special relativity.

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical W. Bernard Carlson Princeton Univ. Press 2015 Theory Shaped the Modern World Over-hyped eccentric or electricity wizard? Bernard Amir Alexander Oneworld 2015 Carlson’s account of Nikola Tesla’s life at the turn of the Through religious and revolutionary figures of twentieth century recalls the inventor’s great creations, the seventeenth century, Amir Alexander tells the such as the alternating-current motor, as well as the history of the struggle for mathematics’ place in unfulfilled promise of wireless power. (See Patrick society. The ‘heretical’ concept of infinitesimals, McCray’s review: Nature 497, 562–563; 2013.) the indivisible points of a line, takes centre stage.

The mathematics was seductive, the Relativity: The Special and the General Dirac’s reticent personality comes across paradoxes were mind-blowing, and it set me Theory (100th Anniversary edition) in his lecture notes on the theory, number- ALBERT EINSTEIN up to try to learn his general theory of rela- Princeton Univ. Press: 2015 ing just under 70 pages and published as tivity. That theory explains how the gravita- The General Theory of Relativity in 1975. tional force is nothing more than space-time The Road to Relativity: The History and Euphoria and creativity pour out of the bending and warping as it responds to the Meaning of Einstein’s “The Foundation of 1,200-page behemoth Gravitation (1973) General Relativity” Featuring the Original presence of energy and mass. To under- Manuscript of Einstein’s Masterpiece by John Archibald Wheeler and his disci- stand this revolutionary viewpoint, I had HANOCH GUTFREUND AND JÜRGEN RENN ples Charles Misner and Kip Thorne. I was to look for the right book, something that Princeton Univ. Press: 2015 spoiled for choice. could lead me through all the intricacies of Although I never used Einstein’s book, Riemannian geometry, which overturns the down the concept of entropy and declared it kept cropping up in my life. I have a rules of Euclidean geometry that we learn in that “matters of elegance should be left to penchant for second-hand bookshops school. Yet I also needed to understand the the tailor and to the cobbler”. Nevertheless, and would keep finding translations, each physics: the bending of light and the orbit there is something honest about Einstein’s with its own story. The French version of Mercury. attempt at popular writing: he does not gloss was first translated by Jeanne Rouvière, One book stood out: Einstein’s popular over difficulties. His theory was, to some a protégée of mathematician and politi- Relativity: The Special and the General cian Emile Borel, and subsequently Theory. Published in German in 1916, expanded by Einstein’s friend Mau- following Einstein’s groundbreaking rice Solovine. The mathematician 1915 paper on the general theory of BIZARRE PREDICTIONS FROM Tullio Levi-Civita, whose work had relativity, it was translated into English been instrumental in sucking Einstein in 1920. In 2015, we see the publica- into Riemannian geometry, recom- tion of a special anniversary edition, GENERAL RELATIVITY, mended an engineer, Giuseppe Luigi as well as an annotated version of the PREDICTIONS THAT Calisse, to do the Italian translation. manuscript of the paper in Hanoch The Russian version was translated by Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn’s The Road EINSTEIN WAS WARY a Jewish logician-philosopher, Grego- to Relativity. rius Itelson, who lived in Berlin and Einstein’s book Relativity was OF AT FIRST, HAVE was beaten to death in 1926 by an supposed to be understandable by all, anti-Semitic crowd. yet to have enough maths to allow the STOLEN HIS THUNDER. Today, Einstein’s book is a historical more educated reader to get into the curio. I don’t think anyone still reads guts of his ideas. It has very few equa- it as he intended. There have been so tions, rendering it less explanatory and extent, all there in his book. The treatment many attempts at popularizing the theory, more illustrative. But there are definitely a just did not seem to work, and he knew it. from practitioners and journalists, that lot of words. Einstein set himself the task of He told a friend, the Swiss–Italian engineer anyone can find a book to their taste. And explaining the concepts and ideas behind his Michele Besso, that it was “quite wooden”. In we have learnt much in the century since theory, using situations from everyday life, later years, he joked with the Polish physi- it was published: a popular book on rela- such as trains moving on platforms or clocks cist Leopold Infeld that the description tivity must now talk about the expanding on walls. His prose is tempered with some “generally understandable” on the book’s Universe and the Big Bang, black holes and philosophical considerations, for example a cover should be changed to “generally not singularities. These bizarre predictions discussion of the ‘a priori’ assumption that understandable”. from general relativity, predictions that empty space exists. Having given up on Einstein, I looked Einstein was wary of at first, have stolen Dare I say it, I found the prose inelegant. around and found much to choose from. his thunder. This caught me by surprise. I had read some As soon as Einstein had put his theory out, Yet I can still see some fugitive magic of Einstein’s 1905 papers, including the others took over and made it their own. in Relativity, despite its “wooden” tone. It one introducing special relativity, and had Arthur Eddington, the UK astronomer conjures Einstein as the oracle presenting thought them gems. Relativity, by contrast, who had measured the bending of light in a a theory to the world — one of the most was not particularly clear and a bit dull. 1919 eclipse expedition, wrote a beautifully revolutionary and profound theories of all Einstein had declared, in the introduction, crafted mathematical treatise on the theory time. ■ that he would repeat himself frequently, of space-time in 1923. Erwin Schrödinger, “without paying the slightest attention to one of the fathers of quantum physics, Pedro Ferreira is professor of astrophysics the elegance of the presentation”. In this he came up with his own, more-conceptual at the University of Oxford, UK, and author might have been following the dictum of rendition, Space-Time Structure, published of The Perfect Theory. physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who pinned in 1950. Fellow quantum pioneer Paul e-mail: [email protected]

A Rough Ride to the Future Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar James Lovelock Penguin 2015 Trash Trade Independent scientist James Lovelock gazes at Adam Minter Bloomsbury 2015 Earth’s past, present and future as the self- One man’s trash is another’s treasure in Adam regulating system Gaia. Focusing on climate, he Minter’s exploration of the US$500-billion global foresees humanity in 100 million years merged recycling trade. US waste tops the charts, and with artificial intelligence to survive a hotter Earth. China’s electronics-manufacturing industry sifts (See Tim Lenton’s review: Nature 508, 41; 2014.) gold from mountains of e-waste. Emily Banham