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Paul Halpern.
The Quantum Labyrinth: how Richard Feynman and John Wheeler revolutionized time and reality.
Basic Books. 2017

In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler’s Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant, and a lifelong friendship was born. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman, on the other hand, was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Despite sharp differences in their personalities, they were complementary spirits—and their partnership led to a complete rethinking of the nature of time and reality. It enabled Feynman to show how quantum reality is a combination of alternative, contradictory possibilities, and inspired Wheeler to develop his landmark concept of wormholes, portals to the future and past. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

As riveting as it is revealing, The Quantum Labyrinth shows how Feynman and Wheeler’s remarkable teamwork ensured that quantum physics would never be the same again.

Paul Halpern.
Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the great Big Bang debate.
Basic Books. 2021

Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem ridiculous. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation, just decades ago, its mere mention could cause a fight to break out.

The question of how the universe came to be was one of the twentieth century’s most heated scientific debates. At its center were Russian-American physicist George Gamow and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, two enormously creative and markedly opinionated men. Gamow insisted that a fiery explosion explained how the elements of the universe were created. Attacking the idea as half-baked, Hoyle countered that the universe was engaged in a never-ending process of creation. The battle was fierce. Gamow and Hoyle, both gifted popularizers, took their cases into the public sphere, regularly appearing on TV and radio, and in print. Some careers were made; others were ended. Eventually, Gamow was proven right, and Hoyle faded into obscurity. Despite making truly revolutionary advances in the study of stellar astrophysics, today he is mostly remembered for giving Gamow’s theory the silliest possible name: “the Big Bang.”

Halpern captures the brilliance of both thinkers and offers an uncommonly intimate view of life at the edge of scientific discovery. Flashes of Creation reminds us that even those proved wrong have much to teach us about boldness, imagination, and the universe itself.