I just finished reading The Universe Speaks in Numbers, by the physicist Graham Farmelo.
It’s a great week’s read for those people interested in the relationship between math and science, and it borders on a must-read for those younger people interested in STEM, especially the future “Ss” or “Ms” deciding between math and science.
Farmelo takes a genius-centric and historical approach to the developments of theoretical physics over the last 350 years (from Newton through 2018), only occasionally pointing out that nearly everything we take for granted in our modern world—747s, iPhones, internets, nuclear weapons, power plants and the like—are derived from the concepts these people first described mathematically. He has the perspective of a marriage counselor, describing the often tumultuous relationship between high-level mathematics and equally high level theoretical physics, at one point even leading to a decade’s long divorce, but now happily reunited.
He knows the couples who form the relationship between mathematics and physics well. It reads like an art history book about Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Monet, and Picasso by a time traveler who has sat down and talked to them all—not too far-fetched, as his book is peppered with personal photos of the physicists which he took himself, indicating he does indeed know several of them quite well.
Anyway, I wish this book had been available to read 30 years ago when I made my choice between a PhD in Physics and an MD—perhaps I would have chosen differently. This is a story of wonder, accurately describing the place where artistic creativity overlaps with mathematics and physics as it tries to ask one of the most fundamental questions in humanity: how does everything—and I mean everything, from quantum particles to our cosmos—connect. Excluding the question of God, the only other question which comes close would be the question of consciousness.
Thank you Dr. Farmelo for making my week.