Sep 8 2014
"CERN: How We Found the Higgs Boson," recently published by World Scientific, is a highly valuable contribution to the history of CERN and the science surrounding this most remarkable physics laboratory in the world.
This is the cover of "CERN: How We Found the Higgs Boson." Credit: World Scientific, 2014
The book is very well structured, combining present-day interviews with the scientists of CERN, with important figures and events in the history of physics.
The book is easy to read despite the difficult topic because of the author's ability to glean what is important and convey that information. Furthermore, the book is a brilliant portrait of a whole generation of scientists doing research on the threshold of a new era in physics.
The history of CERN, told in the first part of the book recounts a remarkable political success, largely the brainchild of European physicists desperate for a high-profile place to work, after the brain drain during the Second World War. They were very remarkable physicists, for that matter: Louis de Broglie, Isidor Rabi, Edoardo Amaldi, Pierre Auger, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others. The major part of the book consists of interviews with physicists active in different areas at CERN ¬— ranging from building accelerators to communication with the public.
The author also adds material supporting the topics under discussion: the history of atomic physics; dark matter, and dark energy; supersymmetry, supernovae, and anti-matter. Added are portraits of the main characters in the development of physics, such as Democritus, Faraday, Maxwell, Rutherford, Bohr, and Einstein.
Ralf Krauter from Deutschlandfunk said, "In this exciting and informative book, the historian Michael Krause looks behind the scenes of the largest scientific institution in the world, CERN. The author draws an exciting picture of the people who work at CERN, and also of the ideas and visions that these top scientists really have. This inspiring book is full of stories from the scientific Mecca in Geneva, and it paints a portrait of life on the CERN campus that is highly recommended reading for both beginners and experts."
The book comprises interviews with Rolf-Dieter Heuer (CERN Director-General), Carlo Rubbia (Nobel Prize, 1984), Sir Tejinder Virdee (CMS), Jonathan Butterworth (ATLAS), Masaki Hori (ASACUSA), John Ellis (Theory Divison), Sebastian White (ZDC), Tara Shears (LHCb), and Lyn (the Atom) Evans (LHC), among others. There are also texts and citations by Winston Churchill, Isidor Rabi, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Isaac Newton, and Richard Feynman et al.
Source: http://www.worldscientific.com/