Five Equations That Changed the World

September 4, 1995
Harvard mathematician-physicist Guillen, who explored the human side of mathematics in Bridges to Infinity, now profiles five pioneers whose mathematical equations had far-reaching impacts. This seamless blend of dramatic biography and mathematical documentary links the personal with the scientific. For example, Swiss physicist Daniel Bernoulli, whose hydrodynamic equation led ultimately to the airplane, quit mathematics in disgust with his seemingly pointless career after his jealous father plagiarized his fluid-flow equations. Isaac Newton, whose understanding of gravitational attraction between objects made possible the landing of a human on the moon, was impelled to high achievement partly by an obsessive desire for vindication and revenge against a classroom bully. German physicist Rudolf Clausius, whose wife, Adelheid, died giving birth in 1875, saw life as an ultimately futile contest for survival; his law of entropy, or irreversible energy dissipation, explains a universe in which everything--cells, organisms, galaxies--eventually ages and dies. Also here are British chemist Michael Faraday, father of the electrical age, and Albert Einstein, who rued his decision to encourage Roosevelt to build atomic bombs. A wholly accessible, beautifully written exploration of the potent mathematical imagination.

August 1, 1995
Guillen, an instructor in physics and mathematics at Harvard, devotes this work to discussions of five significant equations in physics and the individuals who developed them. The individuals are Issac Newton (universal gravitation), Daniel Bernoulli (hydrodynamic pressure), Michael Faraday (thermodynamics), Rudolf Clausius (thermodynamics), and Albert Einstein (special relativity). Guillen sets their work in the context of the science of their times with accounts that are obviously fictionalized, containing many purported conversations and private thoughts of the physicists in question. The prose is quite purplish in places, and the matters of fact and interpretation are often questionable if not outright wrong. Not recommended for most libraries.--Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor

September 1, 1995
Take one part each of natural philosophy, biography, and historical novel, mix together, and you have this adventure through two centuries of changing scientific thought. Guillen chooses Newton's universal law of gravitation, Bernoulli's law of fluid flow pressure, Faraday's law relating electricity and magnetism, Clausius' law of constantly increasing entropy, and Einstein's law relating mass and energy, and in each instance discusses the common beliefs (often dominated by religious thinking) of the time, follows that with a short account of the scientist and his discovery, and ends by considering the effect of the discovery on the future. Newton's inquiry leads to a heliocentric solar system and to space travel, Faraday's to the generation of electricity and the electric motor, Bernoulli's to the airplane, etc. Far from being dauntingly technical, Guillen's presentations show how each man overcame significant obstacles and changed the world. He is a good storyteller who will enlighten many about aspects of these five equations that even many an erstwhile engineering student does not know. ((Reviewed Sept. 1, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)

September 9, 1996
Harvard mathematician Guillen looks at five mathematical breakthroughs and the theorists behind them, among them Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.