Abraham Pais

Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World

Inward Bound

Jiahao Chen

Pais writes a gripping tale of scientific discovery beginning from the last decades of the 19th century with the discovery of the X-rays and radioactivity and continues the tale of the study of the forces of nature culminating in modern high-energy, big-budget physics. The book of course neglects the other large branch of physics, i.e. condensed matter physics, and I quibble with some of the omissions, most notably that of the effects of indistinguishability in many-body quantum mechanics, and the writing style at times is inconsistent, sometimes disjointed, but always compelling.

Inward Bound Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World

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