杏吧原创

IN 1928, on a visit to the University of G枚ttingen in Germany, a young Russian named George Gamow came across a paper by the great Ernest Rutherford, theorising a mechanism for radioactive nuclear decay. As he read, Gamow realised the theory was wrong, and that the new quantum mechanics he had taught himself showed why: the alpha particles Rutherford had discovered could escape the atomic nucleus as a wave. In a flash, Gamow had given physics the crucial concept of quantum tunnelling.

Gamow is one of the 鈥渙rdinary geniuses鈥� of Gino Segr猫鈥檚 elegant dual biography. The other is Max Delbr眉ck who, like his friend and contemporary Gamow, was a physicist with an exceptional capacity for questioning authority and straddling the boundaries between disciplines. Delbr眉ck entered the nascent field of genetics after prodding by his mentor Niels Bohr, who claimed that the core physics of life was unknowable. He examined how viruses infect bacteria to show that Bohr was mistaken, and that genes could be studied like any other molecules.

鈥淧hysicists Gamow and Delbr眉ck shared an exceptional capacity for questioning authority鈥�

Delbr眉ck鈥檚 insights helped foster the modern study of genetics and earned him a Nobel prize in 1969. Gamow, drawn to cosmology, left a second profound legacy by intuitively describing the physics of the big bang.

Segr猫 convincingly shows how the pair鈥檚 maverick personalities led to their discoveries, while their restlessness often stopped them seeing their ideas to maturity. Yet his claim that the two differ qualitatively from 鈥渆xtraordinary geniuses鈥�, such as quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli, is less persuasive. After all, inspired trailblazing requires nothing less than extraordinary ingenuity.