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The Infinity Puzzle
- Author: Frank Close
- Category: Non-fiction Biography / Memoir Narrative Science
- Publisher: OUP (UK) / Basic Books (USA)
- Pub date: October 2011
- Length: 416 pages
About The Infinity Puzzle
compelling history… Close really shines in exposing the fraught process of recognition in science
– NATURE
We are living in a Golden Age of Physics. Forty or so years ago, three brilliant, yet little-known scientists - an American, a Dutchman, and an Englishman - made breakthroughs which later inspired the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva: a 27 kilometer-long machine which has already costs ten billion dollars, taken twenty years to build, and now promises to reveal how the universe itself came to be. The Infinity Puzzle is the inside story of those forty years of research, breakthrough, and endeavour. Peter Higgs, Gerard ‘t Hooft and James Bjorken, were the three scientists whose work is explored here, played out across the decades against a backdrop of high politics, low behaviour, and billion dollar budgets. Written from within by Frank Close, the eminent physicist and award-winning writer, THE INFINITY PUZZLE also draws upons the author’s close friendships with those involved.
About the Author
Prof Frank Close OBE is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University, Dean of Graduate Studies and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has been Fellow of the Institute of Physics since 1991, and was awarded the Institute’s Kelvin Medal in 1996 for his contributions to the Public Understanding of Physics.
He has published over 200 research papers on theoretical particle physics, specializing in the quark theory of matter. He is the author of the classic textbook INTRODUCTION TO QUARKS AND PARTONS, and 9 popular books on science, including THE COSMIC ONION, which has become a metaphor for particle physics. APOCALYPSE WHEN? was shortlisted for the Science Book Prize in 1989, and placed ahead of Hawking’s Brief History of Time (but regrettably not ahead in sales).
He was Vice President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science with responsibility for National Science Week, from 1992-98. He has served on several national and international advisory panels, was Interim Deputy for Science at the USA Jefferson Laboratory during 2000-2003, and chaired UK Commissions investigating the scientific case for human spaceflight. He is currently an advisor to CERN’s on their experimental programme.
He also writes for the Guardian and is a regular contributer on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time. He has made numerous television appearances, notably to present the televised Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1993.
In 2000, he was awarded the OBE for Services to Research and the Public Understanding of Science.