Schrodinger's Cat/ The Scam

 In Search of Schrodinger's Cat (Jan 2021)


Read: Jan 2021

Easily the most exhilarating science book I have read in a while. For a person who dreaded quantum physics 101 in high school, this book gave a sense of closure and also left me hanging with ‘only if I had read this book then…..”

The book is an international bestseller, has been written for anyone with a basic science background, doesn’t bore with dreary formulae.

At the heart of quantum puzzle is the famous double slit experiment which initially showed the wave-particle duality of light and then builds the entire edifice of quantum world, where nothing is certain and everything is just a probabilistic guesswork.

The story starts with titans of science in late 19th century, then moves on to the father of quantum world, Einstein, and then come the gaggle of brilliant minds, from Bohr to Heisenberg, who changed our understanding of universe in a burst of illumination in a 30 year period. The classical quantum era petered out with Feynman proving darkly about time travel to the past. Our own SN Bose plays a stellar role as the one who finally buried the ghosts of classical physics with simplistic derivation of black body radiation.

This book is a must gift for any high school kid to generate interest towards a science career.

The Scam (Jan 2021) 


I didn’t watch the much acclaimed TV series on Harshad Mehta. I read this book instead. And I am glad I did. Its very difficult to envision doing justice to all the characters of this rather intriguing tale of greed, and system lacunae.

In popular imagination Harshad Mehta is the symbol of security scam of early 1990s. In reality, he was one of the five strands, although most visible, of a rather complex narrative. Along with flashy Harshad, the others were bumbling SBI/RBI, canny bankers from StanC/Citi, reclusive Calcutta broker Ajay Kayan, and Bhupen Dalal of Bank of Karad who was printing Bankers’ receipts like confetti. There are other numerous characters which give this book a feel of a racy thriller.

My advise would be to read this book rather than spend the same time on the TV. Or you will miss the subtleties of a drama worth for ages.


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