I picked up this book back in 2007, and likely then as now I confused it for “Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist” which was a physics lecture given when I was an adult instead of this novel which was written when I was a boy and must have gotten some use as a textbook, as the volume I have contains some note-taking.
It is a bit of a non-linear story about a classical physicist at the end of his career in the year 1917. He reflects on his career, the physicists he has known, and how Einstein and quantum theory is really not all that–he still believes that aether is the substance tying everything together, and he bemoans that physics has moved from a mechanical understanding of the universe to a mathematical one. The story is set during World War I, when it was becoming clear that the war was not going well for the Germans, so the war and its impact are a counterpoint to the main character’s story–or an augmentation thereof, as he served during the 1870 war with France. The timeline of the story outside the flashbacks and dreams of being judged for being an inadequate physicist takes place over a couple of days starting with a trip to the theatre and through a talk that the professor gives and beyond. He reflects a bit on the suicide of a peer, which leads to a (spoiler alert) final Did he? Probably!
It’s but 157 pages, so a quick read if you’re in it for the fiction. It also comes with 60 pages of end notes and bibliography, essentially, if you want to see how much research the author went through to get details right. But I’m just here for the story, pal. I’ll deal with the math when I come to a copy of “Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist” which I probably have around here somewhere. Actually, I both do and do not until I discover I do, and that copy is right now on my to-read bookshelves vibrating in unison with a copy in Berkeley, California, right now.
An interesting read, more literary than a lot of stuff I stuff into my intellectual gullet, and it kind of reminded me of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy in its end-of-life reflections. Hopefully, the theme is not resonating with me because I am nearing the end of my life, but one never knows. One never knows.
