“THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING A PHYSICIST”

I recommend this book of essays by Victor Weisskoph particularly to the younger generation of scientists (or students interested in science) who are really the audience to whom this work is addressed.  Weisskoph had the particular  gift of being able to explain physics – particularly quantum physics – lucidly (another physicist who had this gift was David Bohm).

A bit of the first  essay from the book “The Life of a Scientist”:

“A physicist enjoys certain obvious priveleges in our society. He is reasonably paid; he is given instruments, laboratories, complicated and expensive machines, and he is asked not to make money with these tools, like most other people, but to spend money. Furthermore, he is supposed to do what he himself finds most interesting, and he accounts for the money he spends to the money givers in the form of progress reports and scientific papers that are much to specialized to be understood or evaluated by those who give the money – the federal authorities and, in the last analysis, the taxpayer…….”

(the underlining is mine!)

GCH

Ojai,CA

2.03.11