research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory. For the past decade he has pursued a career as freelance writer, publishing widely in popular science journals. Phillips lives in Honduras, where he writes and conducts research while studying Spanish.
Phillips applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Einstein's Tutor: The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Einstein’s Tutor happens to be the last page of Chapter 2 (“Gravity”); as it ends a chapter it’s not a full page, but fills about 3/4 of the space.Visit Lee Phillips's website.
On this page we see Albert Einstein taking stock of his mood and situation about a year and a half after completing his greatest work, the General Theory of Relativity, the edifice that still stands as our explanation for gravity and all the phenomena related to it, such as black holes and gravitational waves. At this point in the theory’s career it has impressed the community of physicists and mathematicians by virtue of its unique beauty and coherence, and its ability to resolve some existing puzzles—however it has not faced the ultimate test of new physics, the prediction and confirmation of new phenomena. But Einstein is working on this, and hopes that his theory can be put to the test in the near future.
The page ends with a foreshadowing of the astronomical confirmation that would make Einstein a celebrity. It then points out how this fame would indirectly help to keep the central idea of the book, Noether’s Theorem, on life support long enough for it to become the foundation of the next major development in theoretical physics. The reader is informed that the following chapter will explain what this idea is.
Page 99 is not a bad representation of the tone and substance of the book as a whole. It mentions two of its major characters, and ties together several crucial developments. It’s a pivot: an assessment of the past and the present moment in the historical arc of the book, and a turn to the future. If a reader suffers a violent dyspepsia upon reading page 99, he or she should probably put the book down. But if you enjoy this page, there’s a good chance you will enjoy the whole thing.
I began this journey with a desire to describe the beauty and importance of Noether’s Theorem and its travels though the history of ideas. My research into the Theorem led me to the amazing journeys of Emmy Noether and the people around her. Exploration of archival materials uncovered the story of Noether’s time in America, and to a wealth of details about her life and death that told a story that had never been told before. I never imagined that my desire to explain a physics idea would lead to a tale so filled with drama, pain, heroism, hope, and humor. I am excited to share these discoveries with the world.
--Marshal Zeringue
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