Infinity - By George Gamow

¶ … Infinity - by George Gamow The story-telling format with which author / mathematics instructor George Gamow approaches his subject, and grabs the interest of the reader, goes far beyond math, science, physics and mere numbers placed in esoteric formulae. The book is simply well-presented material, clever, funny, ironic, and readable - a very enlightened and often entertaining way of presenting complex material.

When one reads the book it becomes clear why Gamow won the "Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science" in 1956, a year before the Soviets launched their earth-shaking satellite, "Sputnik." The recipient" of the Kalinga Prize, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) explains on their Web site, "should have striven during the course of his/her career to emphasize the international importance of science and technology and the contribution they make to improving public welfare, enriching the cultural heritage of nations and solving problems facing humanity." Gamow did indeed "strive" during his life and career - and in One Two Three...Infinity - to "emphasize" the importance of science and technology.

He also strove to in his original Preface, written in 1947 at the time the book was first published, Gamow acknowledges that he did not "attempt to tell the whole story" of modern science; he also shows his ability to understand and be modest when he writes (vi) that he has restricted himself to "a general account of physical facts and events in the world of planets, stars, and nebulae..." In his Preface to the 1961 (updated) edition of the book, he describes the "slow but steady progress toward the controlled release of energy through thermonuclear processes," which today readers understand as not an entirely positive (in terms of threats to the planet and mankind) advancement in science, but he also mentions that his newer edition corrects the flaw in his projected age of the universe - from "two or three billion years to five or more billion years." On page 231, introducing his Chapter IX on "The Riddle of Life" - his apt and reader-friendly description of how cells are formed and how they function - Gamow uses the automobile as an analogy into how to study "the fundamental properties of living matter." He shows the reader that in order to understand "the complex matter known as an automobile" one must take the "first step" by "breaking it down into separate, physically homogeneous, constituent parts." And so, just as it is with his "physical investigation" of an auto, he explains that the "sciences of anatomy and physiology" are in a sense "analogous to the science of engineering." And as he launches deeper into the science of human cells, he does not abandoned the analogy with a car; pointing out that although the human body consists of "several hundred thousand billions of separate cells," taking half of one muscle tissue cell would mean losing all the properties of "muscular contraction," the same way in which "only one half of a magnesium atom" would not be useful as magnesium, "but rather a small piece of coal." It is this ability of Gamow to take complicated science and serve it to the reader in interesting bites that earned him a reputation as not only a brilliant scientist, but as a fine writer.

After all, "in order to understand the problem of life in general," he writes (234), "we must look for the solution in the structure and properties of the living cells." And he while delves deeply into the science of cell structure and cell division, he nonetheless returns to concepts that the lay person can understand; on 238-239, he is pointing out that all human cells "contain exactly the same number of chromosomes" but scientists have used "the little fruit fly" to help them understand "many things concerning the basic riddles of life." The cells of a pea plant have 14 chromosomes, corn cells have 20, the fruit fly has 8, and humans (including biologists) have 44.

The reason for all his inclusion of corn, flies, peas, is that chromosomes are the drivers for cell division. On page 90 Gamow describes the "greatest mistake of the physics of the nineteenth century" was the misunderstanding of the properties of light.

Gamow proceeds to explain the updated theory of light based on the errors of the past; and he carefully explains (91) that previous rules ("...all common mechanical properties of various substances result from their atomic structure") make "no sense whatsoever" when applied to an "absolutely continuous substance" aw light ether is believed to be.

But be warned, he continues, space is a "much more complicated thing" than geometry; meanwhile, his description of Michelson's experiment, and his analogy of a motorboat moving up a river (along with the math that puts it into solid scientific perspective), bring light into.