February 1, 2014

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The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle of General Relativity

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By Lee Billings

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The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle of General Relativity
by Pedro G. Ferreira
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

University of Oxford professor Ferreira begins this “biography of general relativity” with a profession of his “lifelong love affair” with Albert Einstein's grandest theory. He writes this almost apologetically because despite its revolutionary linkage of gravity with space and time and its remarkable success in explaining the universe's evolution, general relativity has not always been a popular research topic. Indeed, for decades it was an “almost irresponsible calling,” eclipsed throughout much of the 20th century by the wild successes of quantum physics. Many of its greatest triumphs, from black holes to the big bang, were at first steadfastly opposed by notable physicists, often Einstein himself. In The Perfect Theory, Ferreira masterfully portrays the science and scientists behind general relativity's star-crossed history and argues that even now we are only just beginning to realize its vitality as a tool for understanding the cosmos.

Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight and is senior desk editor for physical science at Scientific American. He is author of a critically acclaimed book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, which in 2014 won a Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science and many other publications. Billings joined Scientific American in 2014 and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

More by Lee Billings
Scientific American Magazine Vol 310 Issue 2This article was published with the title “The Perfect Theory” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 310 No. 2 (), p. 76
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0214-76b
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