Overview
Rovelli condenses the defining ideas of twentieth-century physics — general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, elementary particles, and the nature of time — into seven short lessons originally written for a Sunday newspaper in Italy.
Rovelli wrote these seven lessons for La Repubblica in 2014; they were collected and published as a book in 2015, and became a global bestseller almost by accident. Rovelli is a theoretical physicist at Aix-Marseille University and one of the founders of loop quantum gravity. The English translation by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre is notably graceful.
Key Ideas
General relativity
Space is not a container but is itself curved by mass and energy.
Quantum mechanics
At its smallest scale, reality is granular and probabilistic rather than continuous.
The architecture of the cosmos
The universe is vast, evolving, and older than anything we can meaningfully imagine.
Elementary particles
All matter is made from fifteen species of particle, and even that description is provisional.
Grains of space
The combination of relativity and quantum theory suggests space itself is made of discrete quanta.
Who should read this
Readers who have put off reading physics because they feared the maths. Rovelli's lessons contain almost no equations; what they have instead is a careful respect for how strange the findings of modern physics actually are. Can be read in an evening and returned to for years.
Who might skip it
Skip if you already have a working physics background — the book is deliberately introductory and will feel slight. Skip also if you want detailed derivations; Rovelli is gesturing at the shape of ideas rather than walking through them.
The verdict
One of the most beautifully written physics books ever produced. Rovelli's Italian sensibility — he quotes Horace and Dante naturally, alongside Einstein and Heisenberg — gives the book a warmth most science writing lacks. Shorter than a novella and deeper than most doorstop popularisations. A book I reread when I need to remember why physics is interesting.
We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can't help but be: a part of our world.
— Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
If you liked this
The Order of Time for Rovelli's longer meditation. Helgoland for his latest work on quantum mechanics.