Helgoland

The instant Sunday Times bestseller -- a dazzling story of rebellion and scienceIn June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, had retreated to the treeless, wind-battered island of Helgoland in the North Sea in order to think. Walking all night, by dawn he had wrestled with an idea that would transform the whole of science and our very conception of the world.In Helgoland Carlo Rovelli tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and its bright young founders who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners in science. It is a celebration of youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution. An invitation to a magical place.Here Rovelli illuminates competing interpretations of this science and offers his own original view, describing the world we touch as a fabric woven by relations. Where we, as every other thing around us, exist in our interactions with one another, in a never-ending game of mirrors.A dazzling work from one of our most celebrated scientists and master storyteller, Helgoland transports us to dizzying heights, reminding us of the many pleasures of the life of the mind.

“Carlo Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator . . . What I love about his writing is that it always comes back to people -- people interacting with other people, who are interacting with their world. This is the place where science comes to life”

Popular science has rarely been so good Prospect
The greatest populariser of physics today. . . We are left in a world that is not disenchanted by science, but even more magical. A triumph -- Julian Baggini Financial Times
Theoretical physics often feels rather mystical. This mind-bending, lively book by the bestselling physicist Carlo Rovelli reinforces that other-wordly feeling. . . unforgettable The Times
Rovelli is often called the poet of physics. He writes elegant, wondering, enlarging books on time and quantum theory, much in the spirit of a priest bringing the word of God to his congregation, and I've found it good for my soul to be confronted with how little I understand the world and everything in it -- Sarah Perry Guardian

One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline. . . A momentous book

-- John Banville Wall Street Journal
His most beautiful book yet. . . leaves an unforgettable impression of its author as a man struggling at the furthest limits of human comprehension -- James Marriot The Times
A deep-thinking, restlessly inquiring spirit. . . His books continue a tradition of popular scientific writing from Galileo to Darwin that disappeared in the academic specialisations of the past century -- Ian Thomson Observer
Another brilliant book by Rovelli. . . You'll have fun -- Clive Cookson Financial Times

If anyone can make sense of the topsy-turvy, counterintuitive world of quantum physics, it is Carlo Rovelli, the most poetically minded of today's science communicators

The Times
A remarkably wide-ranging new meditation on quantum theory. . . With the light touch of a skilled storyteller. . . Rovelli is not afraid to mix quantum physics and eastern philosophy -- Manjit Kumar Guardian

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the US, and is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique theorique in Marseille, France. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Helgoland, Reality Is Not What It Seems and The Order of Time are international bestsellers which have been translated into forty-three languages.

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