The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science Including the Original Papers

  • Alan Lightman
Pantheon: 2005. 576 pp. $32.50 0375421688 | ISBN: 0-375-42168-8

Tapas are one of the greatest pleasures of Spain. These delicious snacks and appetizers are one of the foundations of the country's cuisine. Tapas-style books are becoming common too, as the average attention span of modern readers falls by the year. Here we have a promising science book in the genre, The Discoveries, a collection of short pieces on 25 of the best research papers of twentieth-century science.

It is an appealing idea, all the more attractive in this case for being prepared by the much-admired writer Alan Lightman, a physicist and adjunct professor of humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author of three well-crafted novels, several popular-science books and many elegantly written essays, he is well qualified to achieve his ambitious aim of providing an insightful overview of modern science.

In his introduction, Lightman says that he sought to find the patterns of discovery, and to compare their discoverers and the different styles of working and thinking among leading scientists. He spent six months consulting widely before he made his final selection of discoveries. In his description at the end of the process, he is winningly open about his passion for science: “I held the stack of twenty-five papers in my arms, a century of scientific thought. My eyes filled with the tears.”

Steven Weinberg (right) won the 1979 physics Nobel with Sheldon Glashow (left) and Abdus Salam. Credit: BETTMANN/CORBIS

Any selection of science's ‘greatest hits’ is bound to be controversial. But it seems to me that Lightman's choice is reasonable, if rather biased towards physics. He includes papers on quantum theory, Einstein's special (but not general) theory of relativity, nuclear physics, cosmology, Linus Pauling's pioneering paper on the chemical bond, Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, Barbara McClintock's jumping genes, the structures of DNA and haemoglobin, and the first demonstration of genetic engineering. The most striking omission is a paper on plate tectonics, one of the few authentic revolutions of modern science.

The greatest challenge for Lightman is to give substance to his claim that “the first reports of the great discoveries of science are works of art”, an assertion often made but rarely demonstrated. He makes it especially difficult for himself, as instead of giving an overview of the works' literary qualities, he introduces each paper (or sometimes a pair of papers) separately. The result is that the book is a series of 22 essays, each followed by the paper or papers that he has discussed. He reproduces some of them in full, but sensibly cuts the rest of them — a few by as much as two-thirds, others by only a fifth. The research papers are all in English, Lightman having found lucid translations of the seven papers in his selection that were originally written in German.

The physics-related chapters are, predictably, the most accomplished. Best of all is his essay on Hubble's law, which led to the realization that the Universe is expanding. It opens like a novel, on a chilly evening in the late 1920s, the sky “a deep purple gash flecked with stars”. Lightman then paints a vivid picture of Edwin Hubble and explains why the discovery made such an impact. The problem is that he does much the same for all the other topics too, so the book is somewhat formulaic and repetitive. As one would expect of this author, the writing is unfailingly clear, but it disappointingly lacks his usual grace and style. Most of his explanations are surprisingly lacking in flair, and are little better than those conventionally served up elsewhere. Nor is the style especially pleasing: I would never have expected this most elegant of science writers, for example, to introduce Max Planck's ideas on quantization to a lay audience by referring to “elemental vibrating resonators”.

I had hoped Lightman would persuade me that the finest scientific papers are often great art. Alas, it was not to be. I found myself guiltily flicking through the papers that are outside my bailiwick in physics, getting impatient with the technicalities. Lightman's introductions rarely gave me an appetite for unfamiliar fare: a bite or two was quite enough. I suspect that non-physicists will feel the same when they come across the three-line master formula at the heart of Steven Weinberg's unified theory of electromagnetism. They will not, I fear, have been much encouraged to persevere by Lightman's comment: “Even without knowledge of any of the symbols or their meanings, one must be impressed” by the formula's “economy and power”. Some hope.

I have long been an admirer of Lightman, and was expecting The Discoveries to be an elegant and palatable introduction to modern science. Sadly, it is instead an indigestible and tedious read that I believe will have only limited appeal. One of the most creative chefs of science writing has shown that tapas are not his forte.