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Product Description
From Booklist
When more daring nonfiction graphic novels are made, Ottaviani and G. T. Labs will make them. If this biography of the Danish physicist, whom colleagues referred to as "the pope," isn't as adventurously designed as Fallout (2001), Ottaviani and company's book on J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Manhattan Project, it is just as--maybe more--ambitious. Ottaviani, who writes the text and recruits artist-collaborators, aims to inculcate the basics of quantum physics as he tells Bohr's life story. Leland Purvis, artist for the main text, responds to Ottaviani's intentions by switching, as needed, between realism and fantasy (e.g., huge Bohr and huge Einstein astride different planets while arguing quantum theory). The partnership operates near perfectly, and only the unexplained Greek letters in equations (p we know, but D and l?) give nonmathematicians, at least, pause--but don't impede understanding. In the endnotes Ottaviani and several different artists limn instructive anecdotes about early physics, relay Bohr apocrypha, and create a series of comic strips about taciturn French physicist Paul Dirac--all pretty priceless. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
Einstein looked up to him, the Nazis tried to abduct him, his institute in Copenhagen hosted just about every Nobel prize winner in physics you can name (and then some), and Winston Churchill considered him a dangerous, dangerous man. His friends and enemies agreed: Niels Bohr was more than the father of quantum mechanics - he was one of the most important figures of the 20th century. The Tony Award-winning Broadway play "Copenhagen" barely scratched the surface... Suspended in Language tells the complete story of Niels Bohr's amazing life, discoveries, and his pervasive influence on science, philosophy, and politics. Told in an engaging and accessible mixture of text and comics, it includes a full color supplement on how to teleport just like the pros do - and why you might not want to!
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First Sentence
WHEN NIELS BOHR DISAGREED WITH YOU-AND NOT JUST MILDLY, BUT WHEN HE REALLY THOUGHT YOU WERE NUTS-HE WOULD EXPRESS IT IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS: WE AGREE MUCH MORE THAN YOU THINK. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
WHEN NIELS BOHR DISAGREED WITH YOU-AND NOT JUST MILDLY, BUT WHEN HE REALLY THOUGHT YOU WERE NUTS-HE WOULD EXPRESS IT IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS: WE AGREE MUCH MORE THAN YOU THINK. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bohr Isn't Boring!, Nov 27 2004
By Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Suspended In Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped (Paperback)
Science teachers have a large number of stories - some true, some apocryphal, and some somewhere in between - to regale their students with. We have Einstein's demands of the deity concerning dice, Rutherford's booming voice that trashed lab apparatus, Oppenheimer's Indian verse quoting at Trinity, and Teller's strangelovian life among others, but no good stories from the life of Niels Bohr. Jim Ottaviani, Leland Purvis, et al. have saved us with their intelligent, witty, and spacey cartoon retelling of Niles Bohr's life - Suspended In Language.If you choose to dip into this very cool science biography, prepare to learn some physics along with the story of Bohr's life. The authors have supplied a generous number of footnotes and endnotes [done as cartoons] to explain the harder points. The book is indexed and referenced to the extreme. This is not some casual cartoon compilation, but a serious piece of graphic scholarship.
I highly recommend Suspended In Language to anyone interested in physics, scientists, or the history of the 20th Century. I also recommend the other books about scientists from G.T. Labs, including Safecracker [Richard Feynman] and Fallout [Oppenheimer, Szilard, and the Bomb].
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bohr and, April 17 2006
By Alex Morris "Alex" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Suspended In Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped (Paperback)
Ottaviani's Suspended in Language operates on a number of different levels and is appealing with just the right mixture of intellect and humor. While managing to create a biographical text on the life of Niels Bohr the story also delves into the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. Ottaviani created a piece that could be solely read as a primer on quantum mechanics while managing to focus on Bohr's life. The facts are elucidated in illustrations that are intentionally reminiscent of a comic-strip. Just when you begin to feel like you're cramming a bit too much information into your brain all at once the book will take a several page detour into the every day dealings of Bohr's life, and having given you the chance to collect your wits, rev back up to an intellectual furor. What truly makes the book remarkable though is the concise yet vivid description of the various other physicists that Bohr interacted with and influenced. Ottaviani obviously felt compelled to tell the story of Bohr's life because he impacted so many different areas of science and revolutionized fields whose true merit has yet to be realized. Everyone should read this book in order to have a basic understanding of how the scientific notions that guide our lives today were first conceived of and then put into widespread implementation. It's a great read and an even better learning experience.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We don't disagree as much as you think", Jun 9 2006
By Michael K. Smith - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Suspended In Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped (Paperback)
To his colleagues, Niels Bohr was the "Pope of Physics." Razor-edged minds like Dirac, Franck, Frisch, Gamow, Klein, Mott, Oppenheimer, Pauli, Planck, Schrödinger, and others -- many of whom would later become Nobel laureates themselves -- to proud to say they had studied with Bohr. He was a poor lecturer because he never knew where his thoughts would take him and would often stop in the middle of an explanation when a new idea occurred to him. Without him, there would be no modern physics, no quantum mechanics, no basic understanding of the atom. And while Bohr sometimes entertained theories that turned out to be wrong -- which he was the first to admit -- even Einstein was wrong in areas where Bohr was right. Ottaviani is a very uneven graphics chronicler of modern science and scientists, but this is a very well thought out book, as successful an attempt as I have seen to explain Bohr's thought (as well as his humane and internationalist personal beliefs) and the basics concepts of quantum physics.
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