Synopses & Reviews
Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, and me, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize. Based on in-depth reporting and interviews with the major playersfrom Berkeleys feisty Saul Perlmutter to Harvards witty but exacting Robert Kirshner the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have fueled their search, redefined science, and reinvented the universe.
Review
Illuminating. (The New York Times) Panek tells us how Freud and Einstein enabled modern man to rethink the way we think... (Nature) Masterly... Strikingly lucid, easy to follow and successful. (The New York Times) [An] enjoyable blend of theories and personalities, anecdotes and explanations. (Los Angeles Times)
Synopsis
Though they met just once, and even then didn't know what to make of each other's work, Einstein and Freud had more in common than they might have imagined. Each ran out of evidence using the traditional scientific methods that had worked well since the dawn of the scientific revolution and each adopted new scientific methods that opened up unprecedented intellectual landscapes--relativity in Einstein's case, the unconscious in Freud's. In this brilliant, elegant book, renowned science writer Richard Panke traces the creation of two new sciences--cosmology and psychoanalysis--that have allowed us for more than a hundred years to explore previously unimaginable universes without and within. Like a nonfiction version of Einstein's Dreams, Panek's The Invisible Century is a story of a revolution in thought that altered not only what or how much we see, but also the very nature of seeing.
Synopsis
In this brilliant, elegant book, renowned science writer Panek traces the creation of two new sciences--Einstein's cosmology and Freud's psychoanalysis--that have allowed us for more than a 100 years to explore previously unimaginable universes without and within.
Synopsis
The Invisible Century is an original look at two of the most important revolutionsand revolutionariesof the modern era. This dual biography of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud and their parallel journeys of discovery that altered forever our understanding of the very nature of reality. Einstein and Freud were the foremost figures in search of the next level of scientific knowledgeevidence we cant see. Here on the frontier of the invisible, their investigations reached unprecedented realmsrelativity and the unconsciousand spawned the creation of two new sciences, cosmology and psychoanalysis. Together they have allowed us for more than a hundred years to explore previously unimaginable universes without and within.
About the Author
RICHARD PANEK is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the author of The Invisible Century and Seeing and Believing. He has frequently written for the New York Times, as well as Discover, Smithsonian, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications.