Milkman by Anna Burns
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I give up – just cannot finish this stream of consciousness type of book. There are vague political and religious dissensions that are incomprehensible to a non-Irish person. “Maybe-boyfriend” personifies Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle at the quantum level. Other non-committal names include “tablets girl”, “nuclear boy” and “Somebody McSomebody”. There is a gruesome description of a stomach turning mass canicide. The ‘Milkman’ has nothing to do with the dairy industry, whereas the real milkman – taking orders for milk and delivering it by his milk van – is called “the man who did not love anybody.”

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Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution by John Gribbin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quantum theory cannot be understood without an understanding of Newtonian physics – in fact, one must go back to the time of Galileo and then learn about the evolution in the thinking of the physical universe. Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

The author lucidly explains the discoveries of pioneers like Bohr, Heisenberg, Planck, Einstein and other physicists and how Schrodinger built up on these and finally arrived at the wave theory of quantum physics discarding the particle theory. He was validated, in the face of universal opposition, by none other than Einstein himself.

He was greatly influenced by the mystical meanings of Vedanta. On a personal level, Schrodinger was a serial (at times, a parallel) philanderer who did his best work in the throes of erotic passion! The horrors of the two World Wars and the adversities that had to be faced by Austrians may explain the libidinous behaviour prevalent in Europe.

Immensely readable, but towards the end, the author tends to get rather abstruse and turgid.

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