The Recollections Of Eugene P. Wigner: As Told To Andrew Szanton

by Andrew Szanton

Overview

One of the greatest physicists of the 20th century recounts his journey from Hungary and the Nazi invasion to the creation of the first atomic bomb.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738208862
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	07/03/2003
Series:	As Told to Andrew Szanton
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eugene P. Wigner won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles. He lived in Berlin in the early 1930s, and later came to America and worked on the Manhattan Project. He died in 1995.

Editorial Reviews

``Recollections'' might seem too straightforward and too modest a word for the memoirs of a Nobel physicist who moved in the orbits of Dirac, Einstein and Teller. It is, however, the only one that can do justice to the genteel and sweet qualities in this charming, rambling book of reminiscences. Wigner's versions of key moments in the Manhattan Project and the characters of its major participants--Leslie Groves, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller--are perhaps generous to a historical fault, especially his loyalty to Hungarian countrymen Jon von Neumann and Leo Szilard, among the period's most misunderstood and controversial scientists (at opposite ends of the atomic question). Wigner's memory is not self-serving, only loving, and some of this surprisingly durable amiability necessarily must come from his old-country, bourgeois Jewish upbringing, evoked in burnished prose with the assistance of freelance writer Szanton, also a Hungarian-American. The record of 20th-century physics is brighter and clearer for these firsthand recollections by a man whose life came close to the depths of evil and the heights of human ambition and wonder, but who can still close by remarking, ``I have tried to be happy in this life. . . . I could not do better with a second chance.'' (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Wigner won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles. He lived in Berlin in the early 1930s as Hitler rose to power, and later came to America and worked on the Manhattan Project. As interesting as Wigner himself are the recollections of the great 20th century scientists with whom he rubbed shoulders. Includes 16 pages of black and white photos. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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