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.