Rabi. Scientist And Citizen

This is a welcome reissue with a new preface of John Rigden's stellar biography of I. I. Rabi, one of the most influential physicists of the twentieth century. Rabi's discovery of the magnetic resonance method won him the Nobel Prize in 1944 and stimulated research leading to, among other things, refinements in quantum electro dynamics, refined molecular beam methods, radio astronomy with the hydrogen 21-cm line, atomic clocks, and solid state masers. "A steadily fascinating account of an exemplary life. Rigden gives the lay reader a clear idea of what the physicist is seeing, what leads him to such strange thoughts. His account of 'The Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer' gives more useful information in a few pages than I could find in the near thousand-page transcript of the hearing." Howard Nemerov, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Professor of English, Washington University "The twentieth century [was] a time of high adventure in physics. It is no wonder that Rabi, with his ebullience and complex genius and wisdom found his profession 'wonderful.' As Rigden demonstrates in this complete and very good book, physics was wonderful for Rabi and Rabi was wonderful for physics." R. R. Wilson, Science