Quantum Physics for Poets: Why a medicine man talking about quantum physics?

I constantly search for scientists who write well and who can convey the esoteric knowledge in their highly specialized field to the general readers.  Leon Lederman was the one I discovered and read the past few years.  He was the one led me to read particle physics through his books of The God Particle and Beyond the God Particle.

I couldn’t find anything to buy on Amazon’s Prime Day last month, but I felt compelled to buy something, lest Prime Day might be “wasted”, so I picked Lederman’s Quantum Physics for Poets, a book I once checked out from Carnegie Library, but never finished it.  This is the best book to understand quantum physics for a non-physicist, admittedly one need to have some basic understanding of quantum physics to digest and absorb this book.  Come to think about it Beyond the God Particle was also the Prime Day book two years ago. 

Quantum physics is to classic physics what molecular biology is to biology; there will be no molecular biology in 1950s had quantum physics not be born in 1920s.  About ten years ago I wrote a lengthy article with a theme along this line.  I obviously couldn’t handle the complexity and multitude of the topic, the writing became so convoluted and complicated that I was at loss to rationalize and justify what I tried to say.  I dare not to revisit this topic.  I recall Janice was trying to help me out by rewriting several paragraphs to make it more readable. 

After retirement from the Director of the Fermilab in 1990, Lederman (who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for the discovery of muon neutrino) taught a class of quantum physics for the non-science majored undergraduates in the University of Chicago. A New York Times article wrote, “The university lists the course as ‘Quantum Mechanics and the Structure of Matter,’ but the students call it ‘Physics for Poets’.”

I am positive the title of “Quantum Physics for Poets” comes from students’ “Physics for Poets”, however, this was not acknowledged in the book.

All University of Chicago students are required to take one year of physical science and one year of biological science.  How great the University of Chicago is! I bought a 54-volume set of Great Books of the Western World nearly 40 years ago.  The project came from University of Chicago.

Many physicists greatly contributed to the advancement of life science.  There is a category of “in praise of physicists” in my blog talking about these scientists; unfortunately, I have only three entries so far.

I personally consider Max Delbruck the father of molecular biology.  He is a theoretical physicist by training and shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Salvador Luria in 1969 for the elucidation of the genetic structure of viruses.  Luria was the one sent James Watson to Cambridge, England and the rest is history.  Watson had a touching eulogy speech on Delbruck’s memorial service.

Why a medicine man talking about quantum physics?  Because it is the origin of the ‘quantum leap’ of the modern medicine, which was propelled by the advance of molecular biology.  Without quantum physics, there will be no molecular biology.