Showing results for "alan lightman"

A modern classic, Einstein's Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clingin...

As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a purely scientific view of the world. Even as a teenager, experimenting in his own laboratory, he was impressed by the logic and materiality of the universe, which is governed by a small number of disembodied forces and laws. Those laws decree that all things in the world are material and impermanent. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea, Lightman was overcome by the overwhelming sensation that he was mer...

In The Accidental Universe, physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores the emotional and philosophical questions raised by discoveries in science, focusing most intently on the human condition and the needs of humankind.Here, in a collection of exhilarating essays, Lightman shows us our own universe from a series of fascinating and diverse perspectives. He takes on the difficult dialogue between science and religion; the conflict between our human desire for permanence ...

Bestselling author and MIT Professor, Alan Lightman, reveals the benefits of wasting time and allowing our minds to freely roam.We have apps, smart watches and calendars that constantly remind us to be productive and stop wasting time. We have created a frenzied lifestyle in which time is money, with not a minute to be wasted, and the twenty-four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to small units of efficiency.Profe...

With echoes of Calvino, Rushdie, and Saramago, this is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale."As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe." So begins Alan Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr g creates time, s...

"Engrossing . . . Leave[s] us with a richer picture of physics as a lived activity." — Los Angeles Review of BooksIn Quantum Legacies, David Kaiser introduces readers to iconic episodes in physicists' still-unfolding quest to understand space, time, and matter at their most fundamental. In a series of vibrant essays, Kaiser takes us inside moments of discovery and debate among the great minds of the era—Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Stephen H...

A story about the hidden world of light... Renowned physicist Alan Lightman, author of Ada and the Galaxies, turns his focus to light waves in a second story for children.There’s only one gift Isabel wants for her birthday: a way to see invisible things. She can hardly think of anything else until the day of her party arrives! Unwrapping a big box, Isabel finds a surprise inside – a glass prism – and a dazzling world of previously invisibl...

“VERDICT A vivid and moving book-length narrative poem that places the reader inside of a universe of wonder; of interest to poetry readers and beyond.” —Library JournalFrom the author of international bestseller Einstein's Dreams and National Book Award nominee The Diagnosis.After decades of living “hung like a dried fly,” emptied and haunted by his past, the narrator, a man who has lost his faith in all things f...

**In this captivating, insightful book, acclaimed physicists Alan Lightman and Martin Rees illuminate the life and work of numerous scientists in order to demystify the scientific process and show that scientists are concerned citizens, just like the rest of us.“Remarkable. . . . Illuminating with refreshing clarity the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary work of scientists. This book is essential reading." —Jennifer Ackerman, bestselling author of What an Owl Knows**...

In Alan Lightman's new book, a verse narrative, we meet a man who has lost his faith in all things following a mysterious personal tragedy. After decades of living "hung like a dried fly," emptied and haunted by his past, the narrator awakens one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, first turning to t

In poetic vignettes, Einstein’s Dreams explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, ...

Bennett “Benito” Lang is a young scientist who seeks solace in the precise and irrefutable laws of physics, only to find that he cannot escape his own humanity. But he is about to discover love, betrayal, and a whole spectrum of mortal phenomena. Soon he will be forced to face the unpredictable, everyday reality he evades—and to learn from it.