Reviews

Companion volume to French's well-received Einstein: a centenary volume (1979), the present work is devoted to another giant of 20th-century physics. It contains a collection of new and reprinted essays about Bohr, his life, and his work by his fellow physicists, former students, and others, as well as some of Bohr's own writings. His contributions to atomic and nuclear physics, his highly original research methods, his lifelong interaction with leading physicists from around the world, and his many humanitarian concerns mark Niels Bohr as one of the outstanding personalities of this century. This volume will enable a wider audience to more fully appreciate the nature of this complex man. Thomas E. Margrave, formerly with Physics & Astronomy Dept., Univ. of Montana, Missoula

This hefty companion volume to French's Einstein: A Centenary Volume (1979) celebrates and explores the life and work of the Danish progenitor-developer of atomic theory and quantum physics early in this centurya man who, while esteemed as Einstein's peer, was little known to the public during his lifetime. French and Kennedy have assembled a richly satisfying collection of essays on Bohr and his role as founder of the ``Copenhagen school'' of physics. Some 30 of Bohr's colleagues and students (Nobelists Heisenberg, Bethe and Mott among them) contribute scientific papers and reminiscences that blend with Bohr's own famed writingsthe Trilogy essays of 1912 (abridged here), the 1927 Como Lecture, the brave 1950 Open Letter to the UNto form a science volume of rare quality. Bohr stands here with his friend and unflagging ``arguer'' against quantum physics, Einstein himself. French and Kennedy are physicists at MIT and Edinburgh respectively. Photos. November 15