★★★☆☆ This is how it has to be

Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics

Steven Weinberg

In reviewing The Impossible Man, Patchen Barss's biography of Roger Penrose, I remarked, "If I were asked to name the greatest physicists of the second half of the twentieth century, I would probably choose three: Richard Feynman, Steven Weinberg, and Roger Penrose." It is broadly agreed that the greatest physicist of the twentieth century was Albert Einstein. Einstein's great work was relativity, the Special and General Theories. Ironically, it is the General Theory of Relativity that is special. The Special Theory was in the air -- had Einstein not existed, the Special Theory would have been worked out by other physicists at about the same time in much the same form. But General Relativity is Einstein's. It would eventually have been found in some form without him -- indeed, Weinberg might well have discovered it as the force mediated by a massless spin 2 gauge boson -- but General Relativity when and as humans first discovered it was a product of Einstein's mind.

Other great physicists did something similarly personal. Isaac Newton invented the calculus, but so did Gottfried Leibniz. Indeed, Leibniz arguably did it better. But it was Newton who realized that the moon falls toward the Earth in the same way as an apple does, and indeed that the Earth falls towards the sun in that same way. Newton's special sauce was universality -- the rules are the same for everyone everywhere. Feynman, too, made his work personal. The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics and Feynman diagrams are his and no one else's. Penrose's specialty was his extraordinary geometric vision.

I read Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics in search of Weinberg's special sauce. I think I found it: what Weinberg was looking for was inevitability. He wanted to show that the laws of the universe are what they are because nothing else is possible. He didn't succeed. He was the great architect of The Standard Model -- our current best understanding of the forces of nature other than gravity. Modern physicists disdain the Standard Model, precisely because of its lack of necessity. It bristles with unnecessary and arbitrary details. But even in those complaints they are reflecting Weinbergian principles of what physics ought to be.

Weinberg was writing his memoirs when he died. He had finished his notes for the twentieth century 2-Jun-2021. A Life in Physics is those notes, minimally edited by his wife Louise, as the publisher explains in a Publisher's Note:

At the time of his death on July 23, 2021, Steven Weinberg’s memoirs were incomplete, covering his life and work up to the end of the twentieth century. The raw notes were collated by his widow, Louise Weinberg, Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. Following his instructions, Louise first edited them to remove any material that he would have wanted to edit out himself.

Weinberg was capable of writing clearly and engagingly for a general audience, as shown by The First Three Minutes and Dreams of a Final Theory. This is not that. A Life in Physics is full of material that will be incomprehensible if you have not studied quantum field theory. There are also long tedious descriptions of Steven and Louise's social engagements. Weinberg describes himself and his wife as "clubbable," and they certainly knew a lot of famous people, both inside and outside physics. A Life in Physics is not the polished memoir that Weinberg would certainly have published had he lived long enough. It's a rough read, really only for those who are interested enough in Weinberg to work through it.

Louise Goldwasser Weinberg is a huge presence in Weinberg's story. They met as Cornell undergraduates and married soon after. He writes "once married to my girl I wanted to be with her all the time." She became a distinguished legal scholar, and the Weinbergs followed each other all over the world. In fact, he left a prestigious position at Harvard to be with her at the University of Texas at Austin, where he remained from 1983 until his death. He won a Nobel prize in 1979. Unlike many Nobel Laureates, he continued to be relevant and productive for decades. Louise deserves much of the credit for keeping him sane and grounded. Indeed, Steven and Louise would make a great love story, except for the absence of any conflict to liven it up.

In summary, A Life in Physics is a rough but interesting specialist work.

Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics on Amazon

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