I am writing after a long break. Work and other commitments got in the way and I will hopefully be more consistent going forward. The future editions of this newsletter will be structured a little differently than before. Instead of a theme per edition where I discuss one topic and two-three books recommendations, I will have a theme for a week and each edition will have only one book recommendation per edition.I have made this change after I realized that my newsletters were trying to pack in too much information into one edition.This new approach will enable a more in depth exploration of a particular book.This week’s theme is - Books on Science.
Isaac Newton wrote a letter in 1675 to scientist and friend Robert Hooke, where he made his second1 most famous statement :
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
There is no other quote which captures the true essence of scientific progress better than this one by Newton.Advancements in science follow an iterative process. Each scientist builds on the work of those who came before him. Newton built on the work of the Ancient Greeks like Euclid and Archimedes.Einstein built on the work of Newton and Stephen Hawking built on the foundation laid by Einstein in the Theories of Relativity.But these advancements don’t always come at regular, predictable intervals.There are years and years of stagnation followed by a sudden progress in our understanding of the universe. A good example of this is the sluggish progress made since the time of Einstein on the Grand Unified Theory - A theory which attempts to unify the separate sub-fields of Physics of Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics.That is why it is so important to have a body of accessible books on science which can educate and inspire the young.Such books provide the motivation which enables the next generation of scientists to take forward the work of the scientists who came before them, allowing them to stand on the ‘shoulder of giants’ like in the Newton quote, and to look further into the unknown.
Here is one of the many books on science which I have enjoyed reading :
The Code Book - Simon Singh
Every child at some point of his/her life has sent notes in school to friends sitting in class, hidden from the teacher’s eyes. Sometimes, these notes are written in a code — to keep the message secret but mostly because it is fun to write in code. In my view, there is a very real thrill in creating a secret code. But I personally enjoy the challenge of deciphering a code much more. This art, and science, of code making and code breaking is an ancient human activity which has existed from the time that humans invented writing. Simon Singh’s The Code Book explores this topic vividly. It is a fascinating journey through time where we not only witness the brilliance of the code makers but also the optimistic tenacity of the code breakers.The science of Cryptography has serious real world consequences outside the classroom. Every ruler through history - from the Persian King Xerses to Hitler to Vladimir Putin - has relied on the ability of some form of cryptography or other to communicate secretly to further their strategic interests. And though the technology has increasingly become more and more sophisticated , the concept is simple enough for the interested lay person to understand.And Simon Singh , the British particle physicist and author of many popular science books makes Cryptography easy to understand.
The Code Book takes us through the history of Cryptography - from the initial explorations of transposition ( substituting a letter with another one further down the alphabet ) and substitution ciphers ( replacing a letter in the alphabet with another letter ) to the furthering of the technique of frequency analysis developed by the Arabs in the middle ages. The book then describes the development of the Vignere Cipher - the technique of using one more cipher alphabets so that the same letter repeating in a word would be encoded in two different ways (for e.g. the word Hello can be encrypted as AFPAD with the two Ls being encrypted differently as ‘P’ and ‘A’ after passing through two sets of ciphers).
The narrative further takes a detour in the story of Cryptography to explore the science of deciphering long forgotten ancient languages. This section highlights the fact that the art of trying to decipher a code need not only be powered by mathematics and logic but can also be driven by creativity and a deep understanding of context.The chapter throws light on the extraordinary story of the deciphering of the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics - the written language of the Pharaohs - using one of the most astonishing objects in all of archaeology - The Rosetta Stone. The amazing thing about this story is the leap made by polymaths like the British Thomas Young and French Champollion in the key insight that Hieroglyphics are a part phonetic and a part pictorial language. This realization demanded a lot of creativity, not only in the interpretation of symbols, but also in the rigorous testing of the interpretation against the thousands of hieroglyphics unearthed in order to test the hypothesis. The success of this endeavor transformed the field of Egyptology and opened doors to a much deeper understanding of the ancient world. ( Also, the Rosetta Stone is a favorite historical object of mine and since I was a kid, I dreamt of seeing it ‘in person’ — which I finally did in Sept 2017.Sometimes, childhood dreams do come true :-) )
Returning to Cryptography after the interlude on languages , the book’s two most fascinating chapters deal with Cryptography in World War II. Soon after the First World War, A German inventor , Arthur Scherbius, wanted to replace the pen and paper ciphers prevalent at that time with a machine which incorporated twentieth century technology for encryption.His efforts led to the development of the ‘Enigma’, a box shaped encryption machine the size of a standard typewriter which gave the Germans an almost undecipherable encryption method. This technology came to the notice of the Nazis in the 1930s and they quickly made it the standard for all communications in their military. When World War II rolled around, it became very important for the Allied forces to crack Enigma as the fate of most people on the planet depended on it.This critical task fell to a select group of Code Breakers in England, working out of Bletchley Park, whose leader was the future father of Computer Science - the brilliant Alan Turing.The story of how Turing and his fellow mathematicians cracked the Enigma machine is a very famous one, a subject of many books and a movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch titled ‘The Imitation Game’.Not only did the British succeed in cracking the encryption of the Enigma, they were also successful in concealing that fact from the Germans. This often required them to not take any actions to protect against an impending attack. One such instance was when the British learned about the plans of the German Luftwaffe ( Airforce ) to bomb Coventry, a city in West Midlands in England, they let it happen anyway because having acted on that information would have meant revealing to the Nazis that they had access to their secret messages. The infiltration of German military secrets was so thorough that often Churchill would have read the Enigma transcripts in the morning even before Hitler had a chance to read them!
Most books on science focus almost exclusively on explaining scientific phenomena. For example, when reading a book such as Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time - one understands the history of the science of Cosmology and the latest developments in that field up to that time of the writing of the book. Simon Singh covers this aspect but also allows the common reader to experience the thrill of discovery in the same way that a scientist might feel when having a sudden flash of insight which leads to a discovery. It is this precious quality of setting up the narrative and delivering the grand reveal which is awe inspiring in The Code Book.It is an absolutely thrilling, almost hair-raising experience to read through the parts where Turing’s logic is revealed in the cracking of the Enigma after multiple failed attempts.For me, It is this special quality which elevates this book head and shoulders above hundreds of other books on science. Every minute spent reading this book is rewarding and I wish you experience the same joy that I did.
Do let me know what other books on science you have enjoyed reading in the comments section below.
The most famous Newton statement is, of course, the one about the apple falling from a tree inspiring him to propound the Law of Gravity - the most famous anecdote in all of Science