Overview

Paul Ehrenfest grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna. Tatiana Afanassjewa came from a wealthy family in St Petersburg. Their love of science brought them together at the beginning of the twentieth century and led them to Leiden in the Netherlands. There, the ebullient Ehrenfest built up an enormous international network of mostly physicists. Afanassjewa worked -- inevitably -- mainly at home, among the children, on the theory of heat, and thought about the didactics of geometry and how to 'teach children to think'. And as Europe grew darker and darker, the 'bright' Russian house that Afanassjewa had designed blossomed into an oasis for thinkers from all over the world. The list of signatures on the wall of the guest room includes the names of sixteen Nobel Prize winners, including Niels Bohr and, of course, Albert Einstein, Ehrenfest's best friend. Over the past few years, Margriet van der Heijden has delved into the archives to tell the story of Ehrenfest and Afanassjewa and their microcosm, which fell apart when Hitler came to power in 1933. While on the run in England, Einstein heard that Ehrenfest had taken his own life. Afanassjewa had to survive without her professor, who, while ""dancing in front of the blackboard"", had made physics enchanting. Van der Heijden tells their story using many new documents from the Ehrenfest Family Archive and highlighting not only Ehrenfest's contributions to physics, but especially also those of Afanassjewa whose work on thermodynamics, dimensional analysis and the didactics of geometry has previously gotten less attention.

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9780198927099

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Reviews

This is a joint biography of two significant scientists of the early 20th century whose lives and work and marriage are explored fully within that difficult period of rapid scientific advance, cultural hurdles, and political and social upheaval. Unlike many others, it gives full personal and scientific attention to both partners in this marriage. It provides a very informative and at times heartbreaking account of the hurdles, struggles and triumphs experienced by each, and especially by Tatiana Afanassjewa as a female student and scientist in that era. * David Cassidy, Hofstra University * An important book: the first complete dual biography of an important physicist and a significant mathematician. A valuable reference and compelling read. * Paul Halpern, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia * A well-informed, appealing, and instructive biography of two important figures in the history of twentieth century. * Olivier Darrigol, CNRS, France *

Author Information

Margriet van der Heijden is Professor of Science Communication in Physics at the Department of Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology. She has a background in particle physics. She completed her PhD on the quark structure of protons and deuterons at Cern, and has many years of experience as a science journalist and writer. In addition to her position in Eindhoven, she is a columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC and the author of several well-received and award-winning Dutch non-fiction books.

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