In this anthology of science and physics, Richard P. Brennan recounts the lives, times, and ideas of the great physicists of the 20th century. In the preface, he praises the extraordinary directors who made a great contribution to the principles of Quantum Mechanics: advanced reasoning from the likes of Newton, Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Feynman. Each of these great minds contributed important theories and breakthroughs to improve the world view of physics; his thought projects a continuous study in the very essence of the matter.

Setting the stage and foundation for classical physics, Brennan cites the great physicist Isaac Newton (1676), who refers to even older theorists, even to the time of the biblical Daniel and the Greek Democritus. Newton said: “If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants..” Indeed, more giants were on the way; they would develop a division of effort between Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Meanwhile, our intrepid author touches on the contribution of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to motion and speed; whose observations were built in the inquisitive mind of Newton, who was the first to disperse light into its spectrum and then into white light, concluding that light consisted of minute particles. Beginning, Newton entered F = ma (Force equals mass times acceleration), now considered the most useful physical law ever written. Newton assumed the cosmological system to prove the existence of God and thought that science was a form of worship.

Brennan briefly discusses the next four hundred years of minor advances, until the arrival of the supreme genius of our time, Albert Einstein. Silently, Einstein thought his way into history. he imagined Special relativity, constancy of the speed of light and infinity of mass at the speed of light, E = mc2, and Relativity of Simultaneity incorporated. To this observation, he later developed General relativity: containing, in essence, Principles of Equivalence, while gravity and inertia are two different words for the same thing. Einstein forever changed the way the intellect must intercept the appearance of time, space, and matter. Add to this his Cosmological Constant, later rejected, later still revived: a factor to account for the unseen force that holds our universe in the space continuum.

A contemporary of Albert Einstein, Max Karl Ernest Ludwig Planck, rose to fame in 1900, aged 42, Einstein then aged 21. Equally astute, Planck is the father of Quantum Physics, ushering in Modern Physics as opposed to to Classical Physics: the Quantum Theory operating medium. Planck developed his equation E = hf and thus removed the deadlock over the frequency of light and heat, wavelength, and propensity for radiation. His equation designated: ‘a quantum of energy, E, is equal to the frequency, f, of the radiation multiplied by ‘Planck’s constant’, h. Einstein wrote a laudatory tribute to Max Planck, as someone outstanding in the field of science.

Also a contemporary of Einstein and Planck, Ernest Rutherford rose to fame and received accolades such as “the father of nuclear energy.” Rutherford also originated the determination of half-lives in radioactive substances, considering that all living things contain carbon. With a half-life of 5,570 years, carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14 and can be measured with some precision. The unyielding habit is useful for dating the age of many geophysical, archaeological, and paleontological specimens.

Brennan notes: “While Einstein was a theoretician, Rutherford was an experimenter.” As a side note, his bibliographical anthology praises the renowned physicists as intellectuals inclined to musical talent, as well as an abiding interest in metaphysics. Like the requirement of metaphysical exegesis, the search for the unseen and the unknown in physics depends on intuition, fearlessness, serendipity, and above all, concentration.

Niels Bohr was another contemporary of the great physicists already mentioned and stood out at the Fifth Solvay Congress, where nearly 30 of the world’s most renowned physicists met to discuss Quantum Mechanics, complementarity, discontinuity, continuity, correspondence, duality and the Begining of uncertainty. Niels Bohr was not the last, but he was one of many honored by Brennan’s pen. If one wants to walk the long road from physics to Quantum Mechanics, the advancement of knowledge, or explore the intellect of the thinkers who paved the way, then this book is a good place to start. How wonderful to have this set of thoughts from the great minds of the giants of physics.

Outside of the world’s major physics studies, the vast field of metaphysics is open to reappraisal, syllogistic affirmation, or rejection. Advanced studies are available to explore humanity’s greatest motivating force: its susceptibility to the unfathomable, unseen, and unknown. Brennan makes several observations about the preoccupation of great minds with the mystery of biblical interpretation.