By Kristy Ju
The 2014 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science is A. Douglas Stone’s Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian (Princeton University Press, 2013). Stone, an award-winning theoretical physicist, draws readers into a captivating mix of physics, biography, and the history of science.
He received a Bachelor of Arts with summa cum laude honors in social studies in 1976 from Harvard. During his junior year, he was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa. As a Rhodes Scholar, he received a second “honors” Bachelor of Arts in physics and philosophy, from Balliol College, University of Oxford, in 1978. Stone earned his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. He then held a postdoctoral fellowship at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center and was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Currently, Stone is the Carl A. Morse Professor and Chair of Applied Physics, and Professor of Physics at Yale University. His honors include the McMillan Award of the University of Illinois at Urbana for “outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics” and election to the American Physical Society as a fellow.
Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian highlights Einstein’s significant contributions to quantum physics, beyond his renowned work in relativity. The book elucidates how one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century renounced his own work in quantum physics, due to his conflicting views of how science should be “objective and eternal.”
Selected Book Reviews
Review: Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
Reviewed for Kirkus Review
Review: Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
Reviewed by Daniel Kleppner for Physics Today
Review: Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
Reviewed by Michael Riordan for the American Physical Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science has been offered annually since 1959, and it encourages scholars to contribute their interpretations of physical and biological sciences and mathematics through literature.
For more information about this year’s book award winners, visit the Phi Beta Kappa website.
Kristy Ju is a senior at University of Mary Washington majoring in English and minoring in linguistics. She became a member of Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. University of Mary Washington is home to the Kappa of Virginia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.