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9780198662679

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""[A] jewel of a book....Close, a professor of physics at the University of Birmingham in England, embarks on a deep and illuminating exploration of the symmetries and asymmetries that surround us.""--Scientific American ""This is Frank Close's masterpiece - his best book, and one of the very best introductions to physics for the layperson...Close is a master expositor.""--Sunday Times

Close has been one of my favourite science writers and this year he came up with his best book yet - Lucifer's Legacy. Although the excuse for the book is describing one of the latest ideas in physics - the notion of supersymmetry which lies at the heart of fashionable string theory - in order to tell this tale Close provides one of the very best introductions to physics for the lay person. Not only that, his look at symmetry doesn't just involve the world of particle physics, but the pattern of the sky as seen from the nothern and southern hemispheres, what really happens when a mirror forms a reflection, and the work of Escher. He tells the whole history of particle physics in a very compact form, from the 19th century discoveries such as X-rays, and the electron right through to late 20th century work. And it isn't just physics that gets the Close treatment; quite a lot of chemistry and a little bit of life also get squeezed into a remarkably small number of pages. In one sense, this is a very old-fashioned book, because Close takes the reductionist approach, breaking the world down into smaller and smaller pieces. Anyone who objects to such reductionism on philosophical or moral grounds ought to read this book for an insight into the way Nature really is. Review by JOHN GRIBBIN Editor's note: John Gribbin's many publications include Stardust (Kirkus UK)

[A] jewel of a book....Close, a professor of physics at the University of Birmingham in England, embarks on a deep and illuminating exploration of the symmetries and asymmetries that surround us. --Scientific American<br> This is Frank Close's masterpiece - his best book, and one of the very best introductions to physics for the layperson...Close is a master expositor. --Sunday Times<br>

"""[A] jewel of a book....Close, a professor of physics at the University of Birmingham in England, embarks on a deep and illuminating exploration of the symmetries and asymmetries that surround us.""--Scientific American ""This is Frank Close's masterpiece - his best book, and one of the very best introductions to physics for the layperson...Close is a master expositor.""--Sunday Times"

Author Information

Frank Close is Head of Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham. He was Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, from 1997-2000. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Physics since 1991, and was awarded the Kelvin Medal in 1996. He also lectured at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1993.

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