'Elegance and Enigma'

Quantum mechanics is one of mankind's most remarkable intellectual achievements. Stunningly successful and elegant, it challenges our deepest intuitions about the world. In Elegance and Enigma, seventeen physicists and philosophers, all deeply concerned with understanding quantum mechanics, reply to Maximilian Schlosshauer's penetrating questions about the central issues. They grant us an intimate look at their radically different ways of making sense of the theory's strangeness.

What is quantum mechanics about? What is it telling us about nature? Can quantum information or new experiments help lift the fog? And where are we headed next? Everyone interested in the contemporary but often longstanding conundrums of quantum theory, whether lay reader or expert, will find much food for thought in these pages. A wealth of personal reflections and anecdotes guarantee an engaging read.

Maximilian Schlosshauer is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna. He was inspired to study physics - and in particular quantum physics - after reading Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy and Schrödinger's Nature and the Greeks as a high-school student. Having earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington for work on the foundations of quantum mechanics, he continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at the universities of Queensland and Melbourne, Australia, and at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen. Schlosshauer is the author of Decoherence and the Quantum-to-Classical Transition (Springer, 2007). He is passionate about words and music.

Provided by Springer