112 Mercer Street: Einstein, Russell, Godel, Pauli, and the End of Innocence in Science.112 MERCER STREET: Einstein, Russell, Godel, Pauli, and the End of Innocence in Science BURTON FELDMAN, KATHERINE WILLIAMS, EDS (Electronic Data Systems, Plano, TX, www.eds.com) Founded in 1962 by H. Ross Perot (independent candidate for the President of the U.S. in 1992), EDS is the largest outsourcing and data processing services organization in the country. . In 1943, Albert Einstein invited three friends--pacifist and philosopher Bertrand Russell (person) Bertrand Russell - (1872-1970) A British mathematician, the discoverer of Russell's paradox. , physicist Wolfgang Pauli Noun 1. Wolfgang Pauli - United States physicist (born in Austria) who proposed the exclusion principle (thus providing a theoretical basis for the periodic table) (1900-1958) Pauli , and mathematician Kurt Godel--to his home on Mercer Street in Princeton, N.J. Little is known about what was actually said, but Feldman uses the meeting as a starting point for examining the lives of these four men and their groundbreaking work. Rivalries among the four were strong. But by the time of their reunion, the men also had something in common: They had been sidelined from the ongoing war effort, notably the research at Los Alamos. They also were united by a concern over the politicization of science The politicization of science occurs when government, business or interest groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research which differ from the majority view, or influence the way the research is disseminated, reported or interpreted. . It was, the author notes, the end of innocence in science. Feldman rounds out his account with profiles of two of the men's contemporaries, both of whom represented science's new direction: Werner Heisenberg, who did fission fission, in physics: see nuclear energy and nucleus; see also atomic bomb. research in Germany, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project. Arcade, 2007, 243 p., hardcover, $26.00. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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