Superstring Theory

Crisp, white manuscripts are carefully arranged in a row of sharp stacks across the top of his desk. Two shelves of books, their bindings flush with each other, hang on one wall, two small photos on another. All other walls are free of clutter. Physicist John Schwarz's Caltech office epitomizes orderliness.

Stephen Hawking An Unfettered Mind Kitty Ferguson Palgrave Macmillan: 320 pp., $27 Today is Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday. It's an event worth marking, not least for its profound unlikelihood. As many even outside the physics community know, he learned about 50 years ago that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease). He was given two years to live. However, at the time he was just coming into his own as a theoretical physicist, and he couldn't be bothered to die. Kitty Ferguson, a graduate of Juilliard and author of this intelligent and readable biography, "Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind," is astonishing in her own right.

Stephen Hawking An Unfettered Mind Kitty Ferguson Palgrave Macmillan: 320 pp., $27 Today is Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday. It's an event worth marking, not least for its profound unlikelihood. As many even outside the physics community know, he learned about 50 years ago that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease). He was given two years to live. However, at the time he was just coming into his own as a theoretical physicist, and he couldn't be bothered to die. Kitty Ferguson, a graduate of Juilliard and author of this intelligent and readable biography, "Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind," is astonishing in her own right.

Crisp, white manuscripts are carefully arranged in a row of sharp stacks across the top of his desk. Two shelves of books, their bindings flush with each other, hang on one wall, two small photos on another. All other walls are free of clutter. Physicist John Schwarz's Caltech office epitomizes orderliness.

Is it just our imagination, or are we hearing more rumbles of dissatisfaction from physicists over superstring theory, which has been touted as the much-sought Theory of Everything? This theory has been all the rage among theoretical physicists for several years now, though it is untestable in principle and bizarre to describe. Its strength, its proponents say, is its beautiful mathematics, which unifies diverse phenomena. The key question is whether it is anything more than that.

Not long after Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity 71 years ago, physicists began searching for something they call TOE--or Theory of Everything. Now they think they are on the brink of that discovery with a theory called superstrings. The concept seeks to illustrate the interrelationship among the four basic forces of nature--gravity, electromagnetism and the quantum strong and weak forces. These forces are responsible for all things in nature.

Search for a Supertheory: From Atoms to Superstrings by Barry Parker (Plenum: $21.95; 292 pages, illustrated). What is the world made of? is a question that people have wondered about since the ancient Greeks. But only in this century has science zeroed in on the right answer, which turns out to be extraordinarily elusive. Theoretical physics is not easy. In fact, it's very hard.

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica," one of the great milestones of science and of all thought. In this book (which, like too many other great books, is hardly read anymore) Newton established the idea that the same law of nature that governed falling bodies on Earth also governed the motion of planets and comets in the universe. The idea that nature obeys the same laws everywhere is one of the basic tenets of science.

The next time you hear an account demonizing science and scientists, remember physicist Jim Gates or Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina or Disney engineer Victoria Aguilera. You'll be able to remember them if you watch the new Blackside-produced series for PBS, "Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America," which shows the human side of science as well as anything on television.

Michio Kaku must have been the most interesting kid on his block. When he wasn't reading science fiction, or wondering how carp in the Japanese Tea Garden envision the universe, he was building his own "Betatron," an electron accelerator, with the help of very supportive parents. Kaku assembled it on his high school football field with parts scavenged from the electronic warehouses that dotted the Bay Area, where he grew up in the '60s.

"Big book, big bore," the Greek Callimachus said. "Dialogo" is a little book--a tiny book, hardly a book at all--and it is anything but boring. In 68 pages--with wide margins, no less--Primo Levi, who was a chemist as well as a writer, and Tullio Regge, a physicist, conduct an acrobatic conversation that leaps from Robert Oppenheimer to Kurt Godel to Jorge Luis Borges to studying Hebrew to super-string theory to interstellar travel and then some.