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True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen, the Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics

Posted on: Thursday, 8 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

LILLIAN HODDESON and VICKI DAITCH, True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen, the Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 467. ISBN 0-309-08408-3. 20.95, $27.95 (hardback).

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087404495818

Just as the deadline for this review was approaching, The New York Review of Books published an article by R. C. Lewontin pondering our sense of what constitutes great scientific achievement. He argues that we have a preference for work expressing the ideal of 'great generality': 'There's a new crop of Nobel laureates every year, but there was only one Isaac Newton'. Lewontin juxtaposes Newton with this annual Nobel crop of mere mortals, such as inventors of 'a very useful gadget like the transistor' ('Science and simplicity', The New York Review of Books, vol. L (1 May 2003), 39-42, p. 39). Hoddeson and Daitch, by contrast, argue that one of the inventors of this very useful gadget, John Bardeen, was a true genius.

Whereas Lewontin assumes that there are many notions of great achievement and that these notions have an impact upon our assessments, Hoddeson and Daitch are completely uncritical. There is such a thing as genius and its characteristic traits are 'intelligence, passion, confidence, focus, perseverance, and the habit of breaking down problems into smaller parts' (p. 316). Hoddeson was a personal friend of Bardeen's and even his first choice as a biographer (p. x), and if ever historians of biography need an example that biographers can be too close to their subject, this book is it. That being said, the biographers have succeeded in creating an interesting narrative out of Bardeen's life; not an easy task given that Bardeen was a quiet family man. Colour is provided through the extensive use of anecdotes culled from the authors' many interviews with colleagues and with kith and kin, and to a lesser extent archival material.

Bracketed by the genius argument, the narrative is almost straightforwardly chronological. The bulk of the book takes us through Bardeen's life from birth to the reception of his two Nobel Prizes: in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor and in 1972 with Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer for the theory of superconductivity. Along the way, Bardeen's physics is explained, and well so, but the nature of the material is such that it requires considerable prior knowledge. Hoddeson and Daitch have then inserted two chapters on Bardeen's activities in industry and science policy (framed as civil duty and service - there is no mention of Paul Forman's publications attempting to put physics into the context of the Cold War), before continuing with the chronology of his old age and death. This separation of the political and commercial context of Bardeen's work from the main narrative helps the authors to focus upon Bardeen's purported genius. In the main part of the book, science is described as a straightforward path from experiment to theoretical progress. But in the last chapters covering Bardeen's old age, when his work was largely rejected, the narrative changes into one of consensus and differing perspectives. In other words, Bardeen the winner is not 'sociologized', but Bardeen the loser is. In sum, the book has all the advantages and disadvantages of the classical Victorian 'life and works'.

ARNE HESSENBRUCH

Dibner Institute

Copyright Cambridge University Press, Publishing Division Jun 2004

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