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A Tale of Two Continents - A Physicist's Life in a Turbulent World (Hardcover)
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A Tale of Two Continents - A Physicist's Life in a Turbulent World (Hardcover)
Series: Princeton Legacy Library
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"People like myself, who truly feel at home in several countries,
are not strictly at home anywhere," writes Abraham Pais, one of the
world's leading theoretical physicists, near the beginning of this
engrossing chronicle of his life on two continents. The author of
an immensely popular biography of Einstein, Subtle Is the Lord,
Pais writes engagingly for a general audience. His "tale" describes
his period of hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland (he ended the war in
a Gestapo prison) and his life in America, particularly at the
newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then
directed by the brilliant and controversial physicist Robert
Oppenheimer. Pais tells fascinating stories about Oppenheimer,
Einstein, Bohr, Sakharov, Dirac, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, as
well as about nonscientists like Chaim Weizmann, George Kennan,
Erwin Panofsky, and Pablo Casals. His enthusiasm about science and
life in general pervades a book that is partly a memoir, partly a
travel commentary, and partly a history of science. Pais's charming
recollections of his years as a university student become somber
with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. He was
presented with an unusual deadline for his graduate work: a German
decree that July 14, 1941, would be the final date on which Dutch
Jews could be granted a doctoral degree. Pais received the degree,
only to be forced into hiding from the Nazis in 1943, practically
next door to Anne Frank. After the war, he went to the Institute of
Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. 1946
began his years at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he
worked first as a Fellow and then as a Professor until his move to
Rockefeller University in 1963. Combining his understanding of
disparate social and political worlds, Pais comments just as
insightfully on Oppenheimer's ordeals during the McCarthy era as he
does on his own and his European colleagues' struggles during World
War II. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library
uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available
previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of
Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original
texts of these important books while presenting them in durable
paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy
Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage
found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University
Press since its founding in 1905.
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