Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics

Weinberg (The First Three Minutes), a theoretical physicist who died in 2021 at age 88, reflects with humility on his impressive career in this illuminating memoir. The author recounts how his father gave him books “literally by the bagful” to foster his intellectual curiosity and credits a collection of Norse myths on the universe’s origins with sparking his interest in cosmology. As a teenager inspired by Robert Oppenheimer, Weinberg decided to become a physicist and studied at Cornell University. The extensive discussions of how Weinberg developed his Nobel Prize–winning research reconciling weak nuclear force and electromagnetism is virtually impenetrable for general readers (“The symmetry underlying conservation of the axial vector current of weak interactions would be a kind of isotopic spin symmetry, but ‘chiral’ ”). However, he balances the formidable physics with frank assessments of his weaknesses, admitting that his only book review for the New York Times was “long, disorganized, and boring,” and that “I have never considered myself especially strong mathematically.” He also makes clear that for all his success, his career was not without hardship, including the death of his collaborator Ben Lee in a car accident in 1977 and the canceled construction of the large proton collider he had fruitlessly lobbied Congress for in the early 1990s. This earnest account of the trials and tribulations of scientists satisfies. Photos. (Feb.)