Yes, I have started it, but haven't had a lot of time to read it (not to mention the practical impossibility of trying to read and keep Shan out of trouble or hold the book over the cats. As soon as I sit down lately, they rotate lap duty. Oscar is the easiest. Lucy burrows under and gets her face into mine. Shan steps right over the book and gets into my face.
Okay. Back to the book. It is, so far, easy to understand, but, the first chapters are mostly historical background. I am learning a little more about the physicists behind the Quantum theory.
Do you remember Peter Sellers' movie Being There? Becker's description of Neils Bohr and the relationships he had with his students and colleagues remind me an awful lot of Seller's character, Chance. His discription of Bohr leaves me wondering just how much Bohr knew or how smart he was. According to the book, Bohr was soft spoken and mumbled a lot, making it hard to understand what he was saying. His writing was very difficult, so says Becker, to understand. Bohr often used very long, very convoluted sentences. He also had a lot of trouble understanding a concept, leaving his colleagues and students to be at pains to explain things until he did finally "get it". And then, again, he seems to have been good at restating a problem back to its originator. In all of this, I am of the opinion that his colleagues and students, because they had to work so hard to get him to understand the problem, actually became better at stating their cases. I have to wonder how much Bohr actually contributed, other than being a sounding board, for which he was credited. I am probably being to harsh here. I think I will see if I can find a bio of Bohr; it might help counter this odd opinion of him I am getting.
Made quick work of three SciFi books. One, I discovered, I had already read and decided not to read it again. The other two were mediocre enough for me not to finish.