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Einstein notoriously disliked the inherent randomness in quantum theory—which he described as God playing dice with the universe—and he was not alone. His lifelong friend and another giant of 20th-century physics, Erwin Schrödinger, was one of the architects of quantum mechanics and yet struggled with the mainstream interpretation of the theory, which he parodied in his famous “Schrödinger's cat” thought experiment. Physicist Halpern recounts the two men's quest to find an overarching theory that would resolve these issues and the occasions when vanity and rivalry threatened, but never destroyed, their friendship.
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