E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation

Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the "dominion of matter" with "a great stillness"--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening. Mass, he writes, "is simply the ultimate type of condensed or concentrated energy," whereas energy "is what billows out as an alternate form of mass under the right circumstances." Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. --Gregory McNamee. David Bodanis offers an easily grasped gloss on the equation. E=mc2. But far fewer can explain his insightful linkage of energy to mass. Ju

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's miracle year of discoveries, a new edition of the bestselling "biography" of his famous equationGenerations have grown up knowing that the equation E=mc2 changed the shape of our world, but never understanding what it actually means, why it was so significant, and how it informs our daily lives today--governing, as it does, everything from the atomic bomb to a television's cathode ray tube to the carbon dating of prehistoric paintings. In this book, David Bodanis writes the "biography" of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history--that the realms of energy and matter are inescapably linked--and, through his skill as a writer and teacher, he turns a seemingly impenetrable theory into a dramatic human achievement and an uncommonly good stor

Okay History, Dreadful Science Most of the content of this book is history, history of the developments of various physical concepts (mass, energy, etc) and history of the results of recognition of the energy-producing potential of manipulating radioactive substances (atomic bombs, nuclear power plants, etc). The history as presented is fairly reasonable. The other major content of this book is technical development of the ideas leading to the equation E = mc2 and then its consequences. It's in the area of technical development that content disappoints.A very large number of books providing. Good but could be better The book is good and the enthusiasm of the author is palpable. However, i think it would have benefitted from more in-depth science, less time spent on the cast of characters that developed the atomic bomb in favor of discussions about the science involved, and a more sophisticated use of italics. I don't know if it's just the Kindle edition that's like this, but many times the italics seem either pointless or improperly used. It actually gets in the way of reading the sentence. Easy read on the whole, and if you knew nothing about the equation before, you'll . "Not terribly enlightening book about the famous formula" according to david. Some of the history is interesting (measuring the speed of light, for example). but in general the book is an elementary view of its subject. Sometimes the writing is on the level of a child's explanation, for example, talking about energy and mass running back and forth across the equals sign. The far more interesting aspects of special relativity, length contraction, time dilation, etc., are not even mentioned. These would have been more difficult to explain but would have made a much more interesting book. Instead the book deals just with a formula that was