Eureka! Physics of Particles, Matter and the Universe

To provide a simple account of the whole of physics within 200 pages (excluding a glossary and index) of a small-format book is an extraordinarily ambitious project, yet this is what Roger Blin-Stoyle has attempted in Eureka! and, on the whole, he has succeeded admirably. Furthermore, he has achieved this without resorting to much more than a dozen mathematical expressions, most of them in the treatment of special relativity. To say that the account is comprehensive would be something of an understatement; this reviewer failed to detect a single topic, pure or applied, which could be described as part of mainstream physics which did not get at least a mention in these pages. The book is well written and the explanations are clear, as one would expect from an author who is an eminent scientist and who has given a professional lifetime to physics education and the promotion of the discipline. The reader should be warned, however, not to expect anything very radical – there are no novel treatments, no unique insights. The strength of the book lies in its clarity and compactness. The material is presented in a matter-of-fact manner with no forced emphasis on the exotic, so often a feature of recent attempts to present physics to the lay reader. The modern trend towards early specialization in physics courses in schools and universities has many unhappy consequences, not least of which is the loss of awareness of the essential unity of the subject. In this little book Professor Blin-Stoyle makes a valiant and welcome attempt to address the balance. Anyone with an interest in getting to know what is involved in that area of human knowledge we call physics could do a lot worse than start here.