The Age of Uncertainty

‘Intriguing and well-written … The Age of Uncertainty cleverly interweaves the stories of the leading early 20th-century physicists with the political and personal events that shaped their lives … Hürter’s formidable grasp of the great period of quantum discovery represents a new, exciting approach to the literature about this momentous era.’

* The Wall Street Journal *

‘Remarkable … Hürter treats his subjects like the cast in a nail-bitingly enthralling drama … A stark reminder that epic thrillers aren’t always found in the fiction section.’

– Jane Graham * Big Issue *

‘Highlights the work of Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others did together to shake up physics and introduce quantum mechanics, arguing that the field’s discovery was a collaborative effort.’

* Publishers Weekly *

‘Hürter guides us through the time when physicists developed their fundamental theories.’

* Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *

‘[The Age of Uncertainty’s] great strength lies in the way Tobias Hürter brings together the cast of driven, gifted and all-too-human scientists who upended Newtonian physics, showing how the dynamics between them spurred their discoveries. Quantum mechanics is made accessible to the general reader through key moments in the scientists’ careers, such as Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, Einstein’s theory of relativity and Niels Bohr’s model of the atom, culminating in the race to produce an atomic bomb.’

– Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp * The Sydney Morning Herald *

‘Hürter makes the history of this important period in science and beyond highly readable … It is also an extremely interesting history on the personal and political level … Highly recommended for those with an interest in science and the people who did it.’

– Tim Mendham * The Skeptic *

Tobias Hürter, born in 1972, studied mathematics and philosophy in Munich and Berkeley, and holds a PhD in mathematics. He has been writing about science, technology, and philosophy for magazines and newspapers since 2000. He worked as an editor at the MIT Technology Review and was deputy editor at Hohe Luft, a philosophy magazine that he co-founded. Now he is a permanent freelance editor at DIE ZEIT Magazin Wissen. Hürter is the author of several nonfiction books.

David Shaw works as a journalist for Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, as well as translating from several languages, including German, Dutch, Russian, and French. He lives in Berlin.