About the Author Trained as a theoretical physicist in the schools of Heisenberg and Pauli, Jagdish Mehra is a distinguished historian of modern physics. His major work (with Helmut Rechenberg, six volumes, nine books) is The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, 1900-1942 (Springer-Verlag New York, 1982, 1987, 2000). In 1994 Professor Mehra published The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Oxford University Press), and has just completed (with Kimball A. Milton) a companion volume, Climbing the Mountain: The Scientific Biography of julian Schwinger (Oxford, 2000). With Arthur Wightman of Princeton University, he has coedited The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner in eight volumes (Springer-Verlag, 1990-2000). Professor Mehra has held prestigious academic appointments in the USA and Europe, including the Regents’ Professorship at the University of California at Irvine and the UNESCO - Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Professorship of History of Science in Trieste, Italy, and Paris, France. He lives in Houston, Texas, USA, where he is associated with the University of Houston."Reason, of course, is weak, when measured against its never-ending task." — Albert Einstein, 14 March 1879 — 18 April 1955