As international conflict II wound down and it turned more and more transparent that the Allies might emerge positive, Albert Einstein invited 3 shut friends—all titans of up to date technological know-how and philosophy—to his domestic at 112 Mercer highway in Princeton, New Jersey, to debate what they enjoyed best—science and philosophy. His visitors have been the mythical thinker and pacifist, Bertrand Russell; the boy ask yourself of quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli; and the intense philosopher, Kurt Gödel. Their informal conferences came about faraway from the terrible battlefields of the battle and the (then) mystery lair of experimental atomic physicists in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Using those ancient conferences as his launching pad, Feldman sketches the lives and contributions of the 4 neighbors, colleagues, and rivals—especially Einstein, innately self-confident yet annoyed in his try to get a hold of a unified concept, and the aristocratic yet self-doubting Lord Russell. Masterfully researched, this booklet accessibly illuminates the sentiments of those extraordinary males concerning the international of technological know-how that used to be then starting to go them via, and in regards to the dawning atomic age that terrified them all.