Rating: 4/5
Review:
Enjoyable and rewarding
I enjoyed How To Find A Higgs Boson. It was a bit slow to get going
for me, but the later chapters were excellent.
Ivo van Vulpen is a
working physicist who was a part of the team at CERN which confirmed
the existence of the Higgs boson, so he knows what he’s talking
about. He also writes well (and has chosen a good translator in
David McKay) so the book is both accurate and readable. I did find
the early chapters a little discursive and off the point, delving
into the history of physics, back to Faraday’s work on
electromagnetic induction. Some of this is necessary for context, of
course, but there have been a great many excellent books on all this
and I could have done with a slightly more truncated and tightly
focused approach.
Around half way,
though, things got really interesting with van Vulpen’s excellent
descriptions of the intricate, complex processes involved in the CERN
project and also his obvious love for and pride in the whole
enterprise. Perhaps a few pages on how the results are analysed
statistically to a level which could be considered proof isn’t
everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this section fascinating
throughout, and also the final chapter on what we still don’t
understand and how physicists are trying to tackle these difficult
questions.
I have some
knowledge of physics which certainly helped, but I think this would
be suitable for a non-scientist who is willing to put in a bit of
brainwork. Van Vulpen keeps the mathematics to a minimum and the
rewards are well worth the effort. It’s a readable, enjoyable and
rewarding book which I can recommend.
(My thanks to Yale
University Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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