The Prophet and the Astronomer: A Scientific Journey to the End of Time

by Marcelo Gleiser

Book Overview

Tracing our contemplation of the cosmos from the big bang to the big crunch (The New Yorker), Marcelo Gleiser explores the shared quest of ancient prophets and today's astronomers to explain the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393049876
• ISBN13: 9780393049879
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Another Hat in the Ring--Not the Fellowship of the Ring

Cosmology is a contact sport. I learned this through watching the careers of my father, Ralph A. Alpher, now Emeritus Distinguished Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Union College of Union University (Schenectady, NY), and Robert A. Herman, former Professor of Physics and Engineering at the University of Texas. This is an extremely competitive subject. One in which otherwise intellegent persons will lie, cheat and steal ideas to get ahead. I should know. That's my field, so to speak. Dr. Marcelo Gleiser enters the field with this book, following his astoundingly successful 1997 "The Dancing Universe." If you go into the area of cosmology AND religion, you are going to butt heads! I recently had the great opportunity to sit in the room while Dr. Gleiser interviewed my father, profiled recently in Discover 99 in an article entitled "The Last Big Bang Man Left Standing." He is the last of his generation of Cosmologists during the Golden Era of Physics--the 1930s-1960s. I coin that term here, for the record. I know that Dr. Gleiser, son of immigrants to Brazil from nearby regions of my grandfather--the Ukraine, is a Physicist who actually cares deeply about this connection--for he tried numerous approaches to delve into Dr. Ralph A. Alpher's thinking on the problem. My father has considered this, many times, of course, and written but not published some ideas. Dr. Gleiser, on the other hand, has tackled it in print, the writing is readable to any not-technical person, and I highly recommend it for anyone--whatever side of the creationism controversy the reader has affinity for.

well written but the wrong size

This is a well-written popularization of some very abstruse material, i.e., the creation of the universe and the nature of time. I could quibble with some of the choices he made. He leaves out some things which perhaps he should have included, and includes others which he should have left out. Also, like many modern-day scientists, he sometimes is a little condescending towards ancient philosophers, but in general he does a great job of integrating modern and anicent ideas. My complaint is that the book is the wrong size. I have to admit I am not sure what size it should have been. It is a standard 250-page trade book, but it really should have either been a thin pamphlet or a thick tome-- or possibly a richly illustrated coffee table book a la Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Gleiser's book as it actually exists simultaneously feels like a thin pamphlet with extraneous anecdotes added to pad it out to "full" length and like an abridged synopsis of a magnum opus.

For anyone who was ever wondered about our fate

Marcelo Gleiser has written an extremely compelling and accessible book on the science of "the end of the world" theories. It's exciting that science is taking a serious look at this, just as they have with the origins of our universe. It is especially exciting to me that this book is not the type of writing that seemingly only other scientists can understand. -From someone who has never studied physics nor astronomy in a classroom yet wants to know the "real" science behind humanity's "big" questions.