unique take on the memorable equation. do not know why some of the various stories seemed familiar, but then i do read a bit, i am interested in science, in cosmology, even if it is not like my math is good enough. easy read by focusing on biographical elements of each part of the equation, including some names i had heard before- du chatelet, voltaire, maxwell, hoyle etc- and some new, women mostly, who had been written out of scientific history. long sections to the end, future reading, notes, further adventures of this and that person or idea…

i was really enjoying this, thinking i understood, when my father said he felt he same until he noticed something wrong- or wrongly put- and this confused me, engaged me to wonder what it was, because… he could not remember what it was. i have to take father’s word for it. he is retired university prof in theoretical chemistry. he said he would get back to me next week, and that yes it is a good book anyway. sigh…

dad said it is missing the equation of the Lorentz Transformation, oh well. feel much better. stupid, but better.

review continues: http://www.michaelkamakana.com/favour...

A very entertaining read. The book is about some of the people and discoveries that made it possible for Einstein to come up with his famous equation. Then it discusses some of the ramifications of his famous formula. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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.

Por sí mismo el título: E=mc² explica un poco lo que el autor quería hacer entender sobre el volumen. David Bodanis, profesor de la Universidad de Oxford, en el libro describe la fórmula de la relatividad del físico judío (1879-1955). La narrativa no es solo el pináculo de la historia biográfica del científico, premio Nobel de física en año 1921. Mucho menos es un libro de física donde Bodanis trata de explicar paso a paso la teoría de la relatividad, que seguramente muchos lectores tendrían dificultades para entender debido a la complejidad. Pero el autor en la manera más simple tomó letras y símbolos matemáticos para resaltar cuáles fueron los descubrimientos científicos más convincentes; la historia en temporada de escuela secundaria podría haber sido aburrida, en cambio, Bodanis en esto libro logró convertirla como un evento fácil de entender.

En este viaje emocionante histórico donde se escribieron enciclopedias enteras para explicar el descubrimiento de la relatividad, sin embargo dividiendo capítulos entre ellos para que los lectores y estudiosos entiendan los subtítulos, el profesor universitario recordó algunos de los personajes famosos y históricos que luego marcharon en torno a la fórmula de Albert Einstein. Con confianza se acercó al significado de la ecuación de Einstein y a partir de una representación sintética explicó el título del libro E=mc²: E que significa energía; el signo = permanece igual al de las matemáticas; el signo M para la masa; la C se basa en la velocidad de la luz, mientras que el número 2 final lo da como el proceso de expansión, lo que luego devuelve el efecto del producto. En otras palabra, sea el resultado de una cosa vista con una lupa. A partir de aquí, una vez que la ecuación quedó consolidada de cualquier variación, el autor recuerda que fue de apoyó a varias personas para la profundización de cualquier estudio, por ejemplo: Marie Curiese con los primeros experimentos de radioactividad; la estructura del átomo descubierta por Ernest Rutherford; Enrico Fermi que cavó dentro del núcleo del átomo. Y desde Ernest Rutherford y Enrico Fermi hasta a llegar a Lise Meitnerr que percibió la división del átomo, por ejemplo. Todas personas que consecuentemente estudiaron y trabajaron intensamente para lo que habría sido el efecto violento de una bomba química.
Una vez que se narró brevemente la representación de la relatividad y las personas que apoyaron la ecuación hubo una lucha contra el tiempo frente una destrucción mundial imparable: hubo una carrera para desarrollar la bomba atómica. Un acto que habría cambiado el mundo irrevocablemente ya que la energía de masa cuando condensada y concentrada bajo justas circunstancias se balancea como una forma alternativa de masa y destruye todo lo que está cerca de su rango de acción.
La ingeniosidad de la ecuación del científico en manera pragmática quedó demostrada con la destrucción de Hiroshima. Además, antes de alcanzar el efecto catastrófico de la bomba, Bodanis pensando en ciertas circunstancias era inevitable que no recordara los predecesores que apoyaron la fórmula que marcó el siglo XX. Como por ejemplo el nombre de Maxwell, Faraday, y lo del químico francés Lorenzo Antonio Lavoisier; tal vez estas primeras personas no obtuvieron la popularidad que alcanzó Einstein, pero es cierto que al físico son igualmente servidos para intensificar y establecer definitivamente la ecuación: E=mc².



El texto está disponible bajo la Licencia Creative Commons Atribución Compartir Igual 4.0; pueden aplicarse cláusulas adicionales.

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.

Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο με κάθε κεφάλαιο να αποτελεί ένα διαφορετικό κεφάλαιο της ιστορίας της φυσικής, με κοινό άξονα ότι όλα σχετίζονται με την περιβόητη εξίσωση του τίτλου!

Πολύ έξυπνη ιδέα, και δεν περιλαμβάνει καθόλου μαθηματικά και σύνθετες περιγραφές, εξάλλου ο συγγραφέας είναι δημοσιογράφος, που έχει κάνει επισταμένη έρευνα. Ο τρόπος έκφρασής του είναι σωστός - για όσους είστε επιστήμονες και ψάχνετε προβλήματα - και αποτελεί μια πολύ καλή πρόταση για όσους ενδιαφέρονται για τα επιστημονικά ζητήματα.

Bonus: όσοι ενδιαφέρεστε για το 2ο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, η ιστορία της πυρηνικής βόμβας νομίζω ότι είναι ένα από τα πιο ενδιαφέροντα κομμάτια του, με τη στρατηγική εκατέρωθεν να δίνει και να παίρνει.

I won’t lie, it took me three tries to get through this book and I can’t say I understood even half of it.

HOWEVER, with that said, I appreciated the story in itself and while most of the theoretical dialogue went right over my head, I loved learning about the lives of those involved in the equation, the impacts on history and it’s practical application to every day life. I don’t quite understand how the world will end, but it was terrifying and exhilarating to say the least. As a social worker, who took ONLY grade eleven biology in high school, this was a cool read. But I will never read it again.

Bodanis' new look at an old equation resulted in a surprisingly fantastic book. Not only did it trace the ancestry of E=mc2, but it provided the best biography of women in the early sciences that I have read to date. Through reading Bodanis' perspective on the collaboration of a theory that allowed us to understand how energy turns into matter and matter into energy, I came to unexpectedly love scientists Emilie du Châtelet, Cecilia Payne, and others in deeper way than before. Though I already loved Voltaire, I love him even more after reading this book. Some of the stories told in this book read like a novel. These stories continue to stay with me and haunt me, taking up a lot of real estate in my brain. When a book has such a strong hold on me the entire time I am reading it and beyond, it is such a gift.

What an unexpected treasure. This is now an absolute favorite of mine!

Some of this book was stuff I already knew/had read other places and other info was very new to me. It is definitely a “biography” in that it’s much more history than it is math or science. I thought maybe it would be a good math read for my high schoolers but it really wasn’t. I told my daughter who enjoys theoretical physics that she would probably enjoy it but I’m not going to require anyone to read it. He does have a section about how E=mc2 basically started the world so that could be skipped if desired.

I'll say it - biographies are generally a bore, so you would think that a biography about a physics equation would be worse than televised Bingo. Instead, Bodanis presents a rather unexpected dive into an equation, its origins, its meaning, and its consequences. He delves into all sorts of interesting tangents, like the origin of the "=" sign, and explains everything in a down to Earth manner. I learned that this equation has a rich history of drama, war, and power. Dangerous covert operations were conducted just to keep the right kind of water out of the wrong hands. It turns out that this simple equation is a lot more interesting than it first looks.

I recommend this book for anyone with a casual interest in science history.

Giving 5-stars to this biographical masterpiece makes me want to lower the rating of every other book I’ve read this year. WOW! This biography of the world’s most famous equation (E = mc^2) is unbelievably enchanting, thrilling and fascinating in all the right ways.

Bodanis ingeniously provides the reader with an unforgettable ‘mini history’ of each component of Einstein’s equation — energy, mass, speed, the equals sign and the exponent. He then broadens the reader’s horizon to view the ‘childhood’ (discovery), ‘adolescence’ (paradigm-shift), and ‘adulthood’ (application) of the equation with simplicity and suspense.

I particularly enjoyed the way Bodanis spends time elaborating the contributions of under-represented and under-appreciated women theoretical physicists to both special and general relativity. Wish more books like this existed :/

WARNING: this book will make you fall in love with math

Looking at other reviews of this book it's apparent that it allowed many of its readers to finally understand the famous equation. Apparently I'm either too stupid or too inquisitive, but my experience was quite different.

In my opinion this is mostly a history book, just like one could expect from its subtitle "A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation". It provides comprehensive historical background, spiced up with a lot of little known facts about people, whose work eventually contributed to the formulation of the special relativity theory. It also broadly discusses the consequences of this development, with particular attention given to the race between the Nazis and the US to create the first nuclear bomb.

However, when it comes to the actual equation, the book only skims the surface and mostly wanders around vague borders between physics, cosmology and philosophy. It does not offer any math beyond this deceptively simple equation nor does it explain how the equation relates to the formulas describing the relationship between energy, mass and velocity we learned at school.

The book is a well written biography, and if you are interested in the history of science you will probably enjoy it. However, how anyone could learn any physics from this book remains beyond my comprehension.