Inflationery Universe - Hardcover

Gurth, Alan H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201149427 ISBN 13: 9780201149425

Publisher: Perseus Books, 1997

Synopsis

"Guth's book is written in a brisk, engaging style uncharacteristic of scientific autobiographies. His story tells much about how science sometimes works, how the universe may work, and how on occasion one bright individual can cause an intellectual revolution". The New York Times Book Review"Some great scientists are so great that they become icons of an epoch...Albert Einstein is the pre-eminent example...and Alan Guth is one of Einstein's most brilliant successors". San Franscisco Examiner "Guth's long-awaited account is remarkable both for its clear explanation of the nearly inconceivable and for the personal sense Guth conveys of what it felt like to do theoretical physics during the 1970s and 1980s". Scientific American "Guth equips you with a complete intellectual tool kit in the form of a lucid history of twentieth-century cosmology and particle physics". The Washington Post Book World

About this title

Review:

Just about everyone in the scientific community accepts the theory that our universe began in a "big bang"--but that theory leaves numerous unanswered questions about why the cosmos formed in just the manner we observe today. In The Inflationary Universe, physicist Alan Guth recounts his and others' struggle to expound a theory that could plug the gaps. The outcome is a theory of "inflation" that postulates that the universe underwent an incomprehensibly large expansion in the first fraction of a microsecond of its existence. With the perspective that only a first-person account could provide, The Inflationary Universe sheds light on a leading theory in humankind's continuing quest to understand the universe we live in.

Review:

"Mind-blowing stuff" (Sunday Times)

"[Alan Guth's] remarkably lucid account is set to become a seminal text in cosmology...helping us up the learning curve without ever making recourse to unfriendly mathematical equations" (Literary Review)

"[Guth] conveys how science can be an intensely social and interactive activity, and the erratic and fitful way in which new ideas clarify" (The Times)

"One of the most fascinating and fundamental fields of human enquiry...handsomely rewards study" (Financial Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Perseus Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0201149427
• ISBN 13: 9780201149425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 358