Helgoland

When the young German physicist Werner Heisenberg established the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics on Helgoland in 1925, he set in motion a process that separated the microcosm from the macrocosm. A hundred years later, we owe our knowledge of the fundamentals of chemistry, the functioning of the sun, and even our brain to quantum physics. It is the basis of modern high technology, from lasers to computers. Yet, it continues to present researchers with riddle after riddle.

Rovelli's new book introduces us to the world of physical research into the tiniest particles, which he himself significantly contributes to. What do we know and what can we know about the states of the quantum world, the possibilities of its observation, the limits of our material existence and its description, but also about our capacity for consciousness and ultimately the dizzying perspective of modern particle physics on the nature of our material world as merely a web of relationships and interactions?.