This is not a bad read, but it has some major flaws.

For one, this book is aimed at kindergartners.

Fay Weldon, in an ebullient blurb, claims that by reading this book she achieved an understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity “by osmosis”. I’m afraid my brain does not work that way. For me, insight is based on facts, concepts and reasoning. And some concepts are not easy, and some sophisticated reasoning is sometimes necessary to "get" a difficult theory. In principle, even very hard concepts can be explained in simple terms, but it takes a very talented and patient author to do this well.

Mr Bodanis does not rise to the challenge. He aims his book squarely at readers who have no mathematics, no physics and no chemistry whatsoever, and who are not expecting to pick up any here. For instance, he patiently explains the concept of squaring: four squared is not eight but, don't be surprised, sixteen. Any concept more difficult than this he is afraid to tackle, so most of what we get are broad generalizations, egregious simplifications, rough approximations, not-very-apt similes and repetitions.

On page 50, the author suddenly asserts “That’s why it’s speed can be an upper limit” [he’s talking about the speed of light here] and a few pages further on “That’s what explains ‘c’ in the equation” [light again]. Alas, nothing in the preceding paragraphs or pages warrants these bold statements: we know the speed of light IS an upper limit, but WHY that is so not even the most intelligent and dedicated reader will have fathomed, there simply not being enough explanatory power applied here.

Another thing I find grating in a science book is that Bodanis loves to talk about God whenever given half a chance.

He comes up with a highly original take on Michael Farraday’s work on magnetism : it was inspired by his Sandemanian religious beliefs. Scientists are used to think in straight lines, Bodanis posits, but in church the circle is more important: “I will help you, and you will help the next person, and that person will help another, and so on until the circle is complete”. So that’s why Michael went looking for circular lines around his magnets, duh! Somehow I am not surprised no historian of science ever thought of this before.

And while Bodanis does not discuss Einstein’s religious beliefs explicitly, he disingenuously suggests that the latter was a believer. Twice he mentions that The Wild Haired One referred to God as “The Old One”, and he ends his book with a sentence strongly suggesting Einstein was a theist (…the divine library that he was convinced awaited…). In fact, though he disliked the label “atheist” and on occasion flirted with pantheism, Einstein called a belief in a personal god “childlike” and often defined himself as an agnostic.

If you made it this far down my review, you earned this confession: I only scored this book two stars to mark my displeasure with the overblown blurb on the cover, and the overly generous score on Goodreads. In fairness, this merits three stars.

There are some good stories here, competently told. The author gives pride of place to female scientists whose contributions were at one time underappreciated, which is laudable of course. And the voluminous notes at the end of the book partly offset my criticism about egregious simplification.

So if you find this in a yard sale, go ahead, spend a few cents, it is worth a read. But it has some major flaws. (Da capo)

I should state that I am not the sort of reader this author had in mind when he wrote this book. He cites actress Cameron Diaz saying that she would like to know what E=mc2 means. So not written for a PhD engineer. Still . . .

It should be possible to write a book that explains the science without simplifying to the point of misleading.

Without focusing on a small number of historical persons and giving them credit for advances that were not theirs

Without making some seem more like mystics than scientists or intellectuals.

It may not seem strange that I include a history book in my top 20...until you consider that the history book is not about a person--or a civilization--or an era. It is about an equation. E=mc2.

There are lots of biographies of Einstein, and I think the best may have just been published(I am currently reading "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson.)

But rather than write about the professor, Bodanis discusses each of the five elements of the equation. He also talks about the people and mini-dramas of science that led to the famous discovery in 1905. It is easy on science and numbers--which is fine for me. The hard-core readers can find number-crunching equations on the book's website. It is bursting with stories that are seldom heard in the textbooks--making it easy and fun read.

While I don't agree with some of his conclusions in later chapters, he does make you think.

I recommend this to any of my friends with the slightest bit of interest in physics.

I thought this book was very enlightening, by the fact that the one was able to learn the history around some basic principles that are involved in the equation "E=mc^2" and how they have formulated. I found the connection between religion and new scientific theories in the 18th century a shock, such as the connection of magnetism and electricity by the theory that they both emit circular pluses instead of linear one, the basis of this theory being that people are holy and they work to complete the "circle" through good deeds. This book is filled with scientific history and formulation that causing a greater understanding in basic ideas that people have been told to memorize, causing a slow read, but an interesting one.

Title: E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation
Author: David Bodanis
Pages: 337
Publisher: 0425181642 (ISBN13: 9780425181645)
E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation is by far, one of my favourite biography book. I have never read such an entertaining book where I felt such a passion towards science. I have always hated science in the past two years in high school. But this book really opens my eyes to the beauty of this simple equation with splendid stories and history contexts.
This book is very interesting because the author, David Bodanis takes a very unique approach in explaining the meaning of this equation, E=mc2. “Instead of using the rocket ship-and-flashlight approach, I could write the biography of E=mc2. Everyone knows that a biography entrails stories of the ancestors, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of your subject. It's the same with the equation.” Says Bodanis in his preface. Each letter of the equation E=mc2 represents something, such as "E" is the energy equal to the "M", mass in earth, with different historical stories. The twists and turns were created in the development of this equation, making this book not only unique, but surprising entertaining.
Reading this book not only taught me the beauty of a simple equation, but also brought me to a estate where I get to know the most well-known scientist of all time, Albert Einstein. Einstein was not only obnoxious in school, but he was also unable to take care of his wife and child when he was in his late twenties. This rises my curiosity on how a troubled scientist discovered the most famous equation of all time?
After all, I must emphasize that I enjoyed reading this book, it was a joy. It makes me fall in love with the beauty of a simple equation. It is something magical, as if a mother watched her child grow. This book makes me like physics, something that I want to dig deeper into in the future. I would like to recommend this book to anyone!

I'm not quite sure why I keep going back to these history of science books, but I enjoy them. E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation is pretty much what it says. But if you're looking for just another Albert Einstein biography, author David Bodanis is mostly going to disappoint you here. It's more like a biography of the eponymous equation, examining each term (heck, even the equal sign) in great detail and giving a thorough accounts of the history of each piece and the impact it has had on modern living.

The book strikes just the right balance between physics lessons (don't worry, there's no math) and explaining the scientific achievements leading up to and following in the wake of the equation's discovery. I'm hard pressed to think of a subject that would include French aristocrats getting beheaded over the construction of a wall, Madam Curie's radioactive cookbooks, high-brow academic bickering, and detailed discussions of how make uranium atoms asplode real good. My favorite part was something that actually sounds more like the final level in some World War II video game than a physics textbook: a small group of Norwegian commandos (actually mostly former plumbers and machinists) creeping into a heavy water factory in order to sabotage it and derail the Nazis' 1942 atomic weapon program.

It's all very thorough and very readable and I had no idea that there was so much that went into and came out of the fact that mass and energy are the same thing in two different forms. The end of the book even looks forward billions of years to show how the equation predicts the Earth will end (in flames as the Sun gives one final cosmic belch) and how the universe itself will eventually sputter to a stop. But don't worry, you'll be long dead.

Excelente libro. Claro, entretenido, fluido, agradable, emocionante.
Excelente narración. Excelente documentación.
Bodanis cumple su objetivo, pues ahora tengo una mejor noción de la famosa fórmula E=mc2, gracias a la explicación histórica y por supuesto científica que hace de cada uno de sus componentes y de las relaciones entre ellos.
Leí este libro justo después de terminar "El tío tungsteno" de Oliver Sacks, que tiene una orientación autobiográfica, histórica y emotiva, sobre la química, mientras que el libro de Bodanis, se orienta más a la Física detrás de E=mc2.
Encontrarás: Egos en disputa tras descubrimientos científicos; competencia; reivindicación del aporte de algunas mujeres a la Ciencia o a la Física, como el caso de Lise Meitner; bomba atomática;... y la presencia de E=mc2 en nuestra vida cotidiana (ej: en el sencillo detector de humo que vemos en cualquier lugar).
Es un libro que vale la pena leer para los amantes de la historia o de la ciencia.

4.5 stars & 5/10 hearts. I am not a girl who likes science. But I immediately liked this book. I found it entertaining and informative. I loved meeting many characters and in most places this book was almost a historical novel: you get to know the different characters in detail. At the same time, I got a clear idea of ​​what E = mc2 stands for and understood most of the science. The ending got very scalable, but it was a vivid picture of what most people see. Many characters did not lead a moral life, in particular Voltaire + Mme de Châtelet and Einstein. But it is an extremely interesting and enjoyable book that I intend to re-read.

Vai että niin.... Mukavahan aihetta oli lähemmin käydä läpi näin jo ennen kuin koulussa päästään edes lähellekään sitä, jollei laske Michael Faradayn mainintaa historiantunnilla. Kirjasta oli kyllä hyötyä.

Ennen en tiennyt muuta kuin että eeonämseetoiseen ja että se hassu einsteinheppu sen keksi ja että siinä vasta komea yhtälö. Nyt tiedän kuitenkin paljon, paljon enemmän ja olen ylpeä siitä (eeonämseetoiseen on nyt mielessäni "energia on yhtä kuin massa kertaa valon nopeus toiseen", ja hirveän paljon kaikkea muutakin opin tottakai).

Nyt pitää vain koettaa pitää kaikki tämä fantastinen tieto päässäni...

This is a really fun history of all the scientific discoveries leading up to Einstein's equation. I put it down for a while to read other things, but I am really enjoying this book.

Il titolo: E=mc² spiega un po’ da sé quello che l’autore con un romanzo ha voluto sottintendere. David Bodanis, docente all'Università di Oxford, nel libro raffigura la formula della relatività del fisico ebreo Einstein Alberto (1879 – 1955). La narrazione non è soltanto l’apice della storia biografica dello scienziato, premio Nobel per la fisica l’anno 1921. Tanto meno è un libro di fisica dove Bodanis si cimenta nel spiegare passo per passo la teoria della relatività, cosa che sicuramente moltissimi lettori stenterebbero nel capirla a causa della complessità. Ma nella maniera più semplice ha ripreso lettere e simboli matematici per mettere in luce quelle che furono le scoperte scientifiche più avvincenti; il racconto ai tempi del liceo sarebbe potuto essere noioso invece Bodanis nella stesura è riuscito a convertirlo in un avvenimento di facile comprensione.

In questo entusiasmante viaggio storico dal quale furono scritte intere enciclopedie al fine di spiegare la scoperta della relatività, tuttavia dovendo separare i capitoli fra loro in maniera da far comprendere gli stessi sottotitoli, il docente universitario ha rievocato alcuni dei personaggi storici e famosi che a seguito marciarono attorno alla formula. Con dimestichezza si è avvicinato al significato dell’equazione di Einstein e da una rappresentazione sintetica spiega il titolo del libro, E=mc²: la E ‘sta per energia; il segno = rimane invariato da quello della matematica; il segno M per la massa; la C attinge alla velocità della luce mentre il numero 2 finale lo dà come il processo di espansione, quello che poi rende l’effetto al prodotto tipo il risultato di una cosa vista con la lente d’ingrandimento. Da qui, una volta che l’equazione era ormai consolidata da eventuali variazioni l’autore rammenta che questa diede supporto a diverse persone per l’approfondimento di eventuali studi, ad esempio: Marie Curiese con i primi esperimenti della radioattività; la struttura dell’atomo scoperta da Ernest Rutherford e chi scavò poi all’interno del suo nucleo, ossia Enrico Fermi. Da questi ultimi due scienziati sino a Lise Meitnerr che intuì la scissione; tutte persone che conseguentemente hanno studiato e lavorarono intensamente per quello che sarebbe stato l’effetto violento di una bomba chimica.
Una volta narrata sinteticamente la rappresentazione della relatività e coloro che furono da supporto ci fu una lotta contro il tempo nei confronti di un’inarrestabile distruzione mondiale: con altre parole, ci fu una corsa per sviluppare la bomba atomica, atto che avrebbe cambiato il mondo irrevocabilmente poiché l’energia di massa quando condensata e concentrata sotto le giuste circostanze ondeggia come una forma alternativa di massa e distrugge tutto ciò che è in prossimità dell’influenza del suo raggio d’azione. L’ingegno dell’equazione dello scienziato in maniera pragmatica si dimostrò con la distruzione di Hiroshima. Inoltre, prima di giungere a l’effetto catastrofico della bomba, Bodanis soffermandosi su determinate circostanze era inevitabile che non rimembrasse i predecessori che furono d’appoggio alla formula che segnò il ventesimo secolo, come per esempio il nome di Maxwell, Faraday e quello del chimico francese Lorenzo Antonio Lavoisier. Magari queste prime persone non ottennero la popolarità che raggiunse Einstein ma al fisico sono ugualmente serviti per salire di gradino e stabilire definitivamente l’equazione: E=mc².

A new and additive take on one of the universe's most fundamental models.

This book is one part fun, two parts science, and three parts history. The author takes a very unique approach by dissecting the equation to its fundamental parts (incl. notation) and constructs a biography of its genesis through exploring the innovators responsible for each breakthrough that enabled the breakthrough by Einstein: E=mc^2

My favorite chapters were the last two, which (rather quickly) bring past to present and then paint the highlights of the equation's future.

I still need to read the extensive notes section. Looking forward to some engaging rhetoric around that topic.