Bodanis does a fine job of guidance through the thicket, determined not to resort to equations and to find everyday analogies illustrating the substance of the E=mc2 insight--which is apparently that energy equals matter (just as the equation says!). That equivalence was previously unknown to science, although probably every schoolkid today accepts it in the age of atomic power and the image of the Hiroshima bomb. How very small objects of mass can turn into such prodigious energy is revealed in the power of the c2 speed-of-light multiplier: in terms of mph, 450,000,000,000,000,000.

Good book. Some of the insights even stick for the casual reader.

What you get with this fascinating look is not only at what each of the segments of the equation represents, but a biography on Albert Einstein, what led him up to his discovery and helpful stories of other physics pioneers such as Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Galileo, and others who led up to the formula that ushered in the nuclear age and changed our world forever. In addition, it had an intriguing section on the Nazi heavy water production in Norway in World War II and the Allies continuing efforts to destroy their plant in an impregnable location.

What’s also nice is that rather than bogging the book down with ancillary information that not every reader might want to slog through, it focuses on the basic story that most people might want to hear. Then at the end, it offers up an appendix, telling more about the physicists and other individuals that are talked about in the book, and what happened to them later on in their own stories. After that, it also includes an extensive notes section that fleshes out the information provided in the main part of the story for those who want more. A lot of it is fascinating reading.

Spang

Immensely readable but never with a sense that the author is "dumbing things down" for the audience. I came away from this book with the message that e=mc2 is a fundamentally important equation with applications across so many different areas and pretty much all of us can and should understand what it's about. The clear and understandable descriptions of sometimes very complex science, combined with the fascinating stories of people along the way who've been part of the e=mc2 story, makes for an interesting and engaging read.

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.

For the ones, who look under the surface

I always hated to learn and calculate the formulas for physics and mathematics in school. So why would I deal with it in my free time?

This is a book about the world’s most famous equation that nearly everyone can recite, but almost no one can explain it correctly and comprehensibly. David Bodanis explains us much more than the origins and consequences of Einstein’s discovery that mass and energy are interchangeable, and that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. In fact, the author introduces the reader to the assortment of characters who contributed to the understanding of the equation’s single parts. Therewith Bodanis doesn’t only credit the contributions of forgotten scientist, he rather makes the previously confusing math to a descriptive and easy to handle tool, since we know its history from early on.

To get the feeling where the equation’s origins are and why Einstein did what he did helped me a lot to understand e=mc^2. Throughout the book i acquired a taste for this method of step by step history. In this way, every single part is associated with its role. Indeed, understanding each piece makes it easier to understand the entirety.

Nevertheless, I have to express criticism on this part, too. Unfortunately, the author enlarges upon the contributors too much, what creates the feeling of drifting away from Einstein’s equation and rather points to another topic. As a reader I wish Bodanis would have made more associations with the equation, which would have led to a clear and straight outline of the book. The drifting from the topic harms the reading flow and gave me a feeling of swaying; not really knowing where I am going and how to file the information.

The step by step explanation continues to take its course throughout the book. As the author begins to deal with the more tragically part of the book, the construction of a nuclear bomb, I really appreciated the granularity. Whereby Bodanis confuses in the first part of the book, the details are necessary and make the the topic “nuclear disaster” vivid. I really appreciate the fact that nothing is belittled and the truth of this cruelty is depicted. For this reason I realized for the first time, that e=mc^2 doesn’t only heat up my mac & cheese in the microwave, but it killed millions of people by the use in a nuclear bomb. I have to give the author a lot of credit for the six page long description of what happened in the seconds after the bomb was triggered over Japan: there, Bodanis slows down time, as a chemical chain reaction altered our world forever. This is my favorite part because of the clear description of the reaction; not only on chemistry level, but on a level of humanity, ethnicity and the meaning of life.

Unfortunately, the ending comes too early after the detonation and the book is chopped by two pages. Here, the book could use a clear conclusion, which fades the reading flow away more harmonically.

All things considered, this book is a very good pick for readers of every level of knowledge on the equation, who want to grasp the meaning of the equation beyond the characters of “e=mc^2”.

Ever wondered how this simple yet world defining equation born? Was this something Einstein just plucked out of the air or was this evolved over the time? How each one of the elements in that equation was deduced and when and who before this famous equation was formed? Why this equation is beautiful yet it is scary? How Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed because of this equation and how this equation is going drive the earth to its end?

All these questions are answered in a scholarly yet in a very easily readable form (took me just 3 days of time to finish this book). The author covers the history of science from Faraday to Einstein and post-Einstein but never exhausts the reader with too many science jargon. His way of presenting the facts in a friendly tone makes this book highly readable.

Highly recommended.

My days in school never travelled at the speed of light. Teachers at my school had an innate capacity to ignore the mathematical and concerning details. Therefore, the translation of E=mc² would be

Education = Magical Childhood Collapse

This book made me fall in love with physics all over again. Much like spinning together a crazy plot or fairy tale, scientists must think "out-of-the-box" in order to take a theory to the next level. You kind of feel lighter than air as you read about their thought process.

I loved picturing Einstein at his home with his newborn son on his knee, plotting how light affects the conversion from mass to energy. There is something fantastic about equations--the way all the pieces fit together is quite inspiring. Bodanis also describes how the atomic bomb was developed and other applications of of E=mc(squared).

Anyway, Bodanis is one of my favorite authors. I would also recommend his book about Emilie du Chatlet and Voltaire. He manages to merge science with history and make his vignettes come alive with oodles of odd factoids and anecdotes.

I see here that one reviewer thought that some of the mathematics in this book were incorrect. For me, I wasn't as concerned with accuracy, preferring to read about how people solve problems, build off of each others ideas, and how jealous and ego-centric scientists can be. A great read.

A very engaging and hard to put down ride through the history of science, highlighting the people and their stories behind the names one might have heard of ...or - in the case of female scientists- had not. It is a great introduction to concepts and people around the formula. If you take it as that and not as an attempt to teach you the details relativity theory then it is a great read. The complexity of the subject matter cannot be covered in such a short book, but it serves as a great study guide with all the annotations and extensive bibliography. I came away wanting to read much more about everyone mentioned in that book.

Five years ago I would have thought it strange to be reading the biographies of numbers and equations. But then I read the biography of Zero, and now, here is the biography of the famous equation E=mc2.

You wouldn’t think there would be much to the biography of an equation. But the author gives the details of how the individual terms came to be defined and recognized, and when and by whom, including the concept of squaring numbers and why the speed of light needs to be squared for this equation. Then he goes into how Albert Einstein came to put the various terms together to describe the conversion of mass into energy.

In the case of this equation, there is a further history as well, as it became instrumental in the creation of the atom bomb. So we are treated to the incremental discoveries that led from E=mc2 being just a nice theoretical equation on paper or on a blackboard somewhere to the creation of the atomic bomb. This includes the lesser known story of the Germans’ attempt to create a bomb during World War II and how that was finally sabotaged amid great danger and loss of life. I always had the impression that it had turned out that the German effort had never gotten as far as the Allies feared it had when they were working on their own bomb, but it seems it was a closer call than we thought.

There is an interesting follow-up on many of the people involved in the story of the equation and what happened to them after they played their part in defining the various terms or building the bomb or whatever.

One thing I found surprising was that among the scientists involved in various areas of discovery related to the equation there were at least four women involved to a greater or lesser degree. Except for Marie Curie, whose involvement was fairly peripheral and accidental, I had never heard of any of them before. Emilie du Châtelet had a castle that she made into a research center and money and title, so she was a respected researcher in scientific circles in her day, but her contributions were gradually forgotten over the years. The real surprise was that the women scientists whose work was most shamefully appropriated by others were the ones working in the twentieth century.

I found this book on Scribd.

En biografi over en ligning. En absurd ide, men ret godt udført. Hvem er ligningens forældre og bedsteforældre? Hvornår fødtes den og hvordan blev den voksen? Meget lærerig og interessant. Jeg nød virkelig at læse den og lærte meget nyt undervejs (har ikke en baggrund indenfor kernefysik).

Når jeg kun giver tre stjerner skyldes det, at det simpelthen bliver for dunkelt indimellem. Som om forfatteren midt i det ellers levende og letlæste sprog selv er lidt i tvivl om hvordan et proton virkelig splitter en uran-kerne og så videre.

Nå, men en rigtig god bog, hvis man godt vil vide hvorfor det er så interessant at e=mc^2