How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival

"This is by David Kaiser, who is a physicist. When I was on my fellowship at MIT a few years ago, I took his course on the history of 20th-century physics, which was right up my alley. He’s a great teacher, very entertaining. That comes through in this book, because he takes something that you don’t think would have anything to do with physics—the 60s, hippies and all these fringe movements in California—and shows how, by the 1960s, physics had become hidebound. It was stuck intellectually in some ways. They would just say, ‘Don’t worry about why this works, don’t ask any questions, just shut up and calculate.’ But there was this group of physicists, mostly in California, who had these unconventional ways of looking at things, especially quantum physics. This unconventional approach really led to some breakthroughs in theoretical physics that we’re still exploring. David Kaiser is of that generation himself, so he’s very tuned in to the cultural and social aspects. It’s a very entertaining read and he explains everything quite well. It’s a great book."