An era in the history of science - as a novella. It is September
1918 in a Prussian university town. Victor Jacob, a theoretical
physicist of 69, muses on the present and past of Germany, and the
passing of the era of classical physics. Jacob's heart is clearly
with Helmholtz, Hertz, and Maxwell. His modest research has
concerned the "world-other" - a meaningless concept in the wake of
Einstein. Yet Jacob is not bitter. He looks back with a certain
pleasure at the days of solid cause-and-effect physics, and his
conscientious efforts to lecture and demonstrate experiments before
once-crowded classes. He admires Planck and Einstein; knows that
physics will never be the same again. The war has been devastating,
not only in its death and destruction, but in dividing the
should-be-international world of science. Into these musings,
McCormmach weaves figments of historical figures - Helmholtz,
Warburg, Geiger, Sommerfeld, Planck, Einstein - and also the
officious Friedrich Althoff, the power-broker of German university
appointments. Thus, he brings off a muted Cotterdammerung - a sense
of time and a cast of mind characteristic of WW I Germany, and of
thinking in physics before Uncertainty and Duality took over. If
the technique can be faulted, it is that McCormmach's theme too
often strikes a single note: the pure classicism that unifies his
hero's taste in art, letters, and life. Still, this is an
innovative, surprisingly effective approach to the culture of
science: a small tour de force. (The source notes at the end should
not be skipped, either.) (Kirkus Reviews)
It is the end of an historical epoch, but to an old professor of
physics, Victor Jakob, sitting in his unlighted study, eating
dubious bread with jam made from turnips, it is the end of a way of
thinking in his own subject. Younger men have challenged the
classical world picture of physics and are looking forward to
observational tests of Einstein's new theory of relativity as well
as the creation of a quantum mechanics of the atom. It is a time of
both apprehension and hope. In this remarkable book, the reader
literally inhabits the mind of a scientist while Professor Jakob
meditates on the discoveries of the past fifty years and reviews
his own life and career--his scientific ambitions and his record of
small successes. He recalls the great men who taught or inspired
him: Helmholtz, Hertz, Maxwell, Planck, and above all Paul Drude,
whose life and mind exemplified the classical virtues of
proportion, harmony, and grace that Jakob reveres. In Drude's
shocking and unexpected suicide, we see reflected Jakob's own
bewilderment and loss of bearings as his once secure world comes to
an end in the horrors of the war and in the cultural fragmentation
wrought by twentieth-century modernism. His attempt to come to
terms with himself, with his life in science, and with his
spiritual legacy will affect deeply everyone who cares about the
fragile structures of civilization that must fall before the onrush
of progress.
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