London
Wizardby Mark Seifer, Carol Publishing, 拢27, ISBN 1 55972 329 7
Einsteinby Albert F枚sling, Viking, $37.95, ISBN 0 670 85545 6
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Feynman by John and Mary Gribbin, Viking, 拢18, ISBN 0 670 87245 8
THE hero of Mark Seifer鈥檚 Wizard is a scientist who thinks eating
and sleeping are a waste of time, and instead hops naked onto a vibrating
electrified plate for his daily vivification. He is more intimate with city
pigeons than people, believes he can talk to Martians, has restaurant tables
cleared if a fly so much as touches the cloth, harbours a phobia about ladies鈥�
earrings and develops fever if he merely looks at a peach.
But this mad scientist is not the malicious creation of the antiscience
mafia: Seifer鈥檚 wizard is the real-life Nikola Tesla of AC transmission fame,
inventor of fluorescent lighting and the induction motor. It was Tesla who
turned Niagara Falls into a generator, and designed electrical systems that now
power the world.
Tesla fitted well into fin de si猫cle America. This remarkable
era saw dreams swiftly become reality as electric light, the telephone and the
phonograph tumbled out of the workshops of Boston and New Jersey, and fortunes,
nations and people were tossed back and forth with the changing tides. In
Tesla鈥檚 world, Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt really did greet her guests in a
twinkling frock lit up by little light bulbs.
A Serbian by birth, Tesla arrived in New York in 1884, hoping to persuade
Thomas Edison of the advantages of AC over DC current. Tesla was classified as
an alien in the US, and his European roots served, in the popular media, as a
sign of his other-worldliness. Eventually he would become the model for the
extraterrestrial inventor in Nic Roeg鈥檚 film The Man Who Fell to Earth,
while New Agers now claim he was from Venus.
Like the raptures of a medieval monk in his cell, Tesla鈥檚 creative trances
originated in higher powers鈥攊n his case, electricity and magnetism. He was
a showman who electrified himself with his precious AC, and managed to glow in
the dark. Luminaries from Lord Kelvin to Sarah Bernhardt visited him, and he
sent Mark Twain scurrying to the lavatory when he demonstrated his vibratory
cure for constipation. In London, Tesla captivated J. J. Thomson, and discussed
psychic phenomena with William Crookes. His ideas about interplanetary
communication were not so strange then, for Martians were all the rage in
scientific literature as well as the yellow press of the day. Sadly, the
repeated three beeps Tesla claimed to have received from Mars at last may well
have been the 鈥渄ot dot dot鈥� of the Morse 鈥淪鈥� test signal that Guglielmo Marconi,
Tesla鈥檚 new rival, was transmitting within Europe that same day.
Tesla鈥檚 sparkling demonstrations hid secrets he would not reveal publicly,
for he was forever in patent disputes and royalty battles with George
Westinghouse and Edison. He courted millionaires endlessly to keep his
enterprise afloat. Tesla鈥檚 vision was big: he wanted to unite the Universe with
wireless power, end wars with weapons so terrifying that no one would dare to
fight and save the environment with his clean, boundless electrical energy.
Wizard is a compelling tale presenting a teeming, vivid world of
science, technology, culture and human lives. Yet in spite of Tesla鈥檚 luminous
genius it is a dark book: it happens in hotel rooms and crowded labs, in tangles
of wires and emotions, and inside Tesla鈥檚 mind, where many of his ideas had
their only realisation.
Tesla died of anorexia in 1943. Marconi was the new wizard of the wireless,
and Tesla was broke, redundant and a long way from the scientific mainstream.
Physics, for him, had been about machinery, not mathematics. He had no truck
with upstart theoreticians such as Albert Einstein. Tesla鈥檚 disapproval of
relativity theory had briefly been grounds for others also to dismiss it, but
Einstein won through to become a new kind of wizard. Where Tesla鈥檚 tricks had
revealed wonders of the visible world, Einstein鈥檚 techniques鈥攁nd
results鈥攚ere invisible.
Einstein was famous as a scientist in Europe long before he became an
over-night success in the English-speaking world. As Albert F枚sling
explains in his measured and detailed biography鈥攁 very readable
translation of the well-received German edition鈥攖he Royal Society鈥檚 expeditions
to photograph the solar eclipse off the coast of western Africa corroborated
Einstein鈥檚 general theory of relativity and brought him to prominence in the US
and Britain in 1919. At a time of political upheaval and disputed boundaries,
Einstein turned public attention to the free and boundless heavens, and, as
F枚sling says, 鈥減roclaimed new and scarcely believable news from the seat of
the gods鈥攏ews that, to the war-weary, must have sounded like a secularized
Christmas message鈥�.
The new mass media took to Einstein the man (after all, no one understood his
science, or knew what it was for), and by 1920 had apparently made him feel
鈥渓ike a graven image鈥�. But Einstein also quickly realised that however
discomfiting his reputation for 鈥渟uperhuman powers of intellect and character鈥�,
he could use the influence it gave him 鈥渋n the spiritual and moral domain鈥�. He
had plenty of opportunities to do this later, which makes his popular standing
easier to understand.
But in the early days, Einstein did not enjoy the 鈥渞elativity circus鈥�, and
was puzzled by his popularity with people who hadn鈥檛 a clue about his life鈥檚
work. Charlie Chaplin explained it as they walked through enthusiastic crowds at
a Hollywood premiere: 鈥淭hey cheer me,鈥� said Chaplin, 鈥渂ecause they all
understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.鈥�
By that estimation, Richard Feynman is a mix of Einstein and Chaplin.
Feynman鈥檚 original physics presents the Einsteinian intellectual challenge,
while his personal life and popular writings offer an accessible, Chaplinesque
mix of slapstick and pathos. John and Mary Gribbin鈥檚 biography, Feynman,
shows a man absorbed by science from an early age.
As an undergraduate he avoided nonscience courses, and his second wife
complained in her divorce testimony that he did calculus while driving鈥攁nd
lying in bed. Against this obsessive stereotype is juxtaposed Feynman the
womaniser, joker and bongo-player. The result is two Feynmans, the genius and
the 鈥渓ad鈥�, who run parallel courses. The two are not always in step, and the
life of one is rather more readable than the other.
Einstein claimed that, had he not lived, someone else would have thought of
special relativity, but without Beethoven we would not have the Eroica
symphony. Feynman gave us quantum electrodymanics, but his unique personal
contribution was perhaps his teaching, and the textbooks he wrote as a result.
The Gribbins congratulate Feynman for the days of work that went into each
class, yet they also describe time spent on the lectures as a 鈥渇allow period of
his life in physics鈥�.
Feynman came to wide public notice during the enquiry into the Challenger
disaster in 1986. His televised demonstration of the effect of cold on the
shuttle鈥檚 rubber sealing rings was, according to Freeman Dyson, Feynman鈥檚
鈥渇inest hour鈥� as a communicator. Tesla, in his role as showman, would have
approved.
Yet the outside world is mostly absent from this life in science: even the
Second World War barely figures, despite its impact on Feynman鈥檚 life and work.
A scientific biography set apart from its context raises artificial barriers.
While bongo-playing may be startlingly unusual among physicists, it was probably
a rather mild diversion in the context of a successful Californian life in the
1970s.
The Gribbins want to show that Feynman was loved, and their own affection for
him is clear. Yet neither this, nor their apologetic accounts of his
eccentricities鈥斺�滷eynman lacked respect (in the best possible way) for
authority鈥濃�攏or their sideswipes at Murray Gell-Mann (a mere 鈥渙rdinary
genius鈥�) make his light shine any brighter.
Of this trio, Tesla is the least celebrated. He is also the nuttiest, and the
one today鈥檚 scientists might most readily leave in obscurity. Yet his years of
struggling for money, of courting favour in unpleasant places, of seeking fickle
public approval and harbouring unrealised dreams give Tesla鈥檚 story the most
contemporary resonance.