Adam Frank – The blind spot
Delightfully broad perspective, although with a far too anthropocentric perspective on intelligence and consciousness.
When you push the laws of physics to their extremes, weird things can – and will – happen
Katie Mack – The end of everything
Highly entertaining take on building a rudimentary astrophysics.
Contrarian thinking is a powerful weapon, if combined with genuine curiosity and a deep respect for facts and data
Richard Feyneman – Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman
Not all anecdotes have aged well but there are enough gems to make the book worthwhile.
The success of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is an excellent example of how accidental biases affect scientific progress
A well-written account of the history of quantum physics in the wake of the Bohr v. Einstein controversy.
Metaphysical theories are constraint by the scientific knowledge, but plenty degrees of freedom remain for those in search (or need) of meaning
Sabine Hossenfelder – Existential Physics
Elegant combination of depth, playful curiosity and humbleness.
Earth is an unremarkable planet in an average solar system in a plain-vanilla galaxy in just one-of-many bubble universes
Neil de Grasse Tyson, Richard Gott, Michael Strauss – Welcome to the universe
The great thing about this book is the emphasis on HOW we know what we know about objects that are light years far away that are to our eyes not more than a dot in the sky.
The early 20th century provided a thriving pan-European intellectual and scientific environment, for those men who had the brains and could afford to participate
Margriet van der Heijden – Denken is verrukkelijk (“Thinking is delicious”; in Dutch)
Thorough biography of Paul Ehrenfest and Tatiana Afanassjewa.
The unlikely journey of a talented, black physicist from the hood shows the mechanics of ‘privilege’
Hakeem Oluseyi – A quantum Life
Impressive and heart-warming life story
20th century science gave rise to some truly mind-blowing concepts
Benjamin Labatut – When we cease to understand the world
A highly entertaining fictionalized history of landmark scientific breakthroughs.
Natural philosophy transformed into science thanks to the commitment and sacrifice of some thrill-seeking geeks
Richard Holmes – The age of wonder
Conveys lively how science was considered an undertaking for daring adventurers.
The combination of vested interests in theoretical physics and experimental energy limits leads to bad science
Sabine Hossenfelder – Lost in math
The author stresses that following negative results of experiments, theories are typically watered-down just to the extent that they are untestable – reminiscent of Bruno Latour’s “social constructionof scientific facts”
Entropy (and thereby time) emerges out of our limited ability to distinguish different states of the universe
Carlo Rovelli – The order of time
Remarkably intuitive and enlightening expose of a deep and complex subject; in the audio version even more appealing due to the warm yet solemn reading by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Financial modelling is not the physics of markets
Emanuel Derman – Models.Behaving.Badly.
Derman’s discussion of models in life, physics, and finance is not a juicy as the title suggests, but it offers some good one-liners nontheless.
Developing nuclear physics required a lot tinkering and failing
Atomic Adventures – James Mahaffey
Refreshing view on history of nuclear physics with emphasis on ‘failures’ like cold fusion and nuclear rocket engines in this often counter-intuitive branche of science.