A Passion for Discovery

Some physicists have a passion for discovery. Peter Freund, a Romanian-born emeritus professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chicago, has a passion—and talent—for telling stories. As a physicist, he has done important work in elementary particle theory and areas of mathematical physics, including string theory. As a writer, he wants to share his fascination of the intellectual beauty of physics with a broad audience. A Passion for Discovery is organized in 28 small chapters, most of which focus on important twentieth-century physicists and mathematicians, from Albert Einstein to Edward Witten. In one of the chapters Freund takes us on a brief tour back in time, to the French mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, who in 1744 announced the famous principle of least action, later a cornerstone in quantum theory. (A detailed and recommendable account can be found in W. Yourgrau and S. Mandelstam, Variational Principles in Dynamics...