The Fundamental Constants: A Mystery of Physics , Harald Fritzsch (translated from German by Gregory Stodolsky) World Scientific , Hackensack, NJ , 2009 . $36.00 ( 195 pp.). ISBN 978-981-281-819-5
Like Plato’s Timaeus or Galileo’s Discorsi, particle physicist Harald Fritzsch’s The Fundamental Constants: A Mystery of Physics is an imagined dialog in which questions are posed and answered. In Fritzsch’s book, two of the three characters are based on real people—Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—and the third is the purely fictitious modern-day particle physicist Adrian Haller. The three scientists mainly hold their discussions at the Athenaeum faculty club on Caltech’s campus, but also have occasion to converse during excursions to SLAC and other sites in California. The changing settings serve to illustrate the life of modern physicists and some of the more charming environments associated with their work.
The Fundamental Constants is a translation of Fritzsch’s Das Absolut Unveränderliche (Piper, 2005). As one of the founders of quantum chromodynamics and the standard model of particle physics, Fritzsch is a well-qualified author. Although the book’s theme is centered about the constants of nature, the fictitious discourse also allows a present-day physicist to expound on the great advances of the past half century in response to questions posed by two icons of classical physics. The book delves deeply into the full history and elegance of modern physical theory, including quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, grand unified theories, supersymmetry, and string theory. It also demonstrates the role of the scientific method in those developments.
I liked the book’s discussion of the fine-structure constant, from which it launches into the foundations of quantum electrodynamics. The historical anecdotes were interesting and accurate; some of them even describe Fritzsch’s encounters with Richard Feynman and others involved in the development of modern quantum field theory. The sections about nuclear physics and the discovery of quarks and quantum chromodynamics were insightful, as expected given the author’s credentials. Fritzsch covers the development of modern particle accelerators and explores the rationale for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which was under construction when the original German-language book came out. He includes a summary of the standard model and the Higgs mechanism; his discussions of the motivations for supersymmetry, string theory, and other grand unified theories are all quite good, as are his comments on the Big Bang and the time variation of the fundamental constants. I particularly liked the description, suitable for lay readers, of abelian versus non-abelian gauge theories. In fact, I plan to adapt some of Fritzsch’s pedagogy for my own courses.
Much as I enjoyed the book, I found a few parts slightly irritating. Einstein and Newton are sometimes portrayed as bumbling fools waiting to be enlightened by particle physicist Haller. In parts, the fictional Einstein needs an explanation of early advances in quantum physics that the real Einstein would surely have understood. Moreover, Einstein is not given enough credit for having moved on to higher dimensional theories of gravity; modern string theories suggest that his intuition was actually remarkably good. Also, the criticism in chapter 12 of theoretical astrophysics and astronomy is completely inappropriate. Perhaps some of those stylistic aspects should be passed off as understandable bravado from one whose viewpoint is that of a modern particle physicist. In any event, they do not significantly detract from the book’s overall entertaining and informative nature.
Although written by an expert, The Fundamental Constants is surprisingly accessible, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subtleties of modern physics. For the novice, the dialog device effectively communicates intuitive arguments in an entertaining way. Seasoned physicists, too, particularly those teaching introductory courses on modern physics, will find some of its explanations and insights quite useful.