The Pursuit of Reality Narrative History of the Quantum and the Great Minds That Made it

In a highly accessible style, this book presents a narrative history of the quantum theory with the new developments that intrigue all inquisitive minds. Quantum theory is counter-intuitive and sometimes downright weird. Even Nobel Laureate physicists like Richard Feynman admit that they do not understand it. Yet, so far, there is not a shred of experimental data that conflicts with its predictions. Its effect on our lives is bound to increase with the quantum information era ushered in by the great Bohr–Einstein debate. Tantalizing applications of quantum information like teleportation, spy-proof communication, super-fast quantum computers, and more are going to influence our lives and change our beliefs about the nature of physical reality. This book takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through the intellectual history of quantum that is turning out to be more surprising every day.

1. The Quest For Knowledge.- 2. Perpetual Motion Dream.- 3. Born Rebellious.- 4. Atoms and Radioactivity.- 5. Revolution Within Revolution.- 6. Schr¨odiger’s Wave Mechanics.- 7. Complementarity Embraces Particles and Waves.- 8. Sixth Solvay Conference and Titans Meet Again.- 9. Einstein at Princeton.- 10. Bohm’s Hidden Variables and Bell’s Inequality.- 11. The Gist of Quantum Mechanics.- 12. Can We Ever Hope to Understand Quantum Mechanics?.- 13. Navigating Between the Classical and the Quantum Worlds.- 14. Mathematics, Physics, and Nature.

Born in Ankara, Turkey (1951), Selcuk Bayin received his B.Sc. (1974) from the Physics Department of the Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, and his M.Sc. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) from the Department of Physics of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. After spending a year at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, as a postdoc, he joined METU as an assistant professor of Physics (1981). In 1983, he returned to the USA and spent two memorable years at Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA, as an assistant professor of Physics. A critical decision point in his career was when he answered the call of his Alma Mater and returned to METU, where he became a full professor (1993). He is currently at the Institute of Applied Mathematics at METU. He is a member of the American Physical Society and the Turkish Physical Society. He is also a member of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and the International Alumni Association (IAA). His research mainly focuses on cosmology, the general theory of relativity, and fractional calculus and its applications.