Helgoland

In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg retires to Helgoland, a small, windswept, treeless island in the North Sea, to rest and try to calm his allergy. Sleepless, he walks at night to reflect and at dawn comes up with an idea that will transform science and our conception of the world. He has laid the foundation stone of quantum theory. Carlo Rovelli, who adds his virtuous expertise as a storyteller to his profession as a physicist, exposes us to the origins, development and keys to a theory that changes everything, that serves to explain the universe and the galaxies, that makes invention possible of computers and other machines, and which is still disconcerting and unsettling today because it questions what we believe in. Erwin Schrödinger and his famous cat appear on these pages, the reactions of Niels Bohr and Einstein to Heisenberg's proposal, a crazy visionary named Aleksandr Bogdánov, the relationship of quantum theory with cubism, philosophy and Eastern thought... A dazzling and accessible book that brings us closer to one of the most momentous advances in contemporary scientific theory.