QUANTUM: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality

Date: Wednesday 13 July 2011, 6pm (for 6:15 start) to 7:45pm

Venue: Blackwell’s Bookshop, 21 Blenheim Terrace (opposite Leeds University)

Manjit Kumar's opening remarks (01:06:14)

Manjit Kumar's responses to first round of questions (00:14:32)

Leeds Salon welcomes writer Manjit Kumar to discuss his book QUANTUM: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality.

Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century.

While Quantum sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in Quantum, Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate.

Quantum is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story by the band of brilliant men at its heart.

£5 waged / £3 unwaged, on the door

Reviews of Quantum

Nicholas Lezard, Guardian, 28 March 2009

Andrew Crumey, Telegraph, 12 December 2008

Andy Martin, Independent, 5 December 2008

Steven Poole, Guardian, 15 November 2008

John Gillott, Spiked Review of Books, October 2008

For more reviews visit http://manjitkumar.com/