My World Line: An Informal Autobiography

by George Gamow

George Gamow, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist and an early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory. was awarded the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO for his popularization of science. Born in Odessa, Russia, he was a colleague of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Peter Kapitza and Francis Crick. He was a fellow at Cambridge, Univ. of Copenhagen, Univ. of Leningrad, Univ. of London, Washington Univ. (Wash., DC), Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Univ. of Colorado. My World Line is an intimate portrait of an unorthodox, witty and warm man, whose free spirit and creative intuition endeared him to his colleagues in the scientific community.

Genres: Biography, Science, Physics, Russia, History, Nonfiction

178 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 1970

About the author

George Gamow (Russian pronunciation: [ˈɡaməf:]; March 4 [O.S. February 20:] 1904 – August 19, 1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov (Георгий Антонович Гамов), was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist born in the Russian Empire. He discovered alpha decay via quantum tunneling and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, big bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, nucleocosmogenesis and genetics.

Reviews

[Rafaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never heard of Gamow before but I'm glad I read this book. Stan Ulam's biography (which is also very good) mentioned him and made me curious about his personality. I can't say Gamow's book shed a light on it as much as I expected, but I still quite enjoyed reading about his funny anecdotes and stories about Russia (one of my favorite countries).

He had a very interesting life, but I was also very impressed by how well he explained scientific concepts. I know nothing about physics but he made it quite easy to understand his and his colleagues work. Of all the books I've read that were written by scientists (including Feynman), I think Gamow was the most successful as an educator, because he makes everything seem simple and fun. It's a fantastic skill and makes me wonder how it was like to have him as a professor.

Anyway, to me the highlights of the book were the stories about Russia, the dinner with Madame Curie, his first attempt at fleeing his home country, and Rutherford confronting him about a strange letter he received. I wish there was more about Lev Landau, who seems very fascinating, but very little was written about him.

The foreword written by Ulam (which also appears in his own autobiography) makes Gamow seems an extremely interesting character and quite different from other scientists (more multidimensional, not arrogant, socially well adjusted etc.). My World Line gives only a glimpse of it, but it's still very much worth it.

[David Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a shame Gamow didn't write about his time in America for this book. His writing style is enjoyable and he tells great stories in his books.

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an autobiography of the prominent Soviet-American nuclear physicist written in a style similar to that of the later Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Georgy Gamow was born in 1904 in Odessa into a family of schoolteachers. He studied physics at the University of Odessa (then the University of Novorossia) and later at the University of Leningrad, where he befriended Lev Landau and other subsequently less famous physicists. As a student, Gamow also taught physics at an artillery academy; many years later this brief service in the Red Army may have barred him from participating in the Manhattan Project. After graduating, Gamow did physics research at Göttingen under Max Born, at Copenhagen under Niels Bohr, and at Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford. At Göttingen, Gamow used the newly invented quantum mechanics to explain the Geiger-Nuttall rule of alpha decay: the rule ties the kinetic energy of the ejected alpha particle with the logarithm of the half-life of the decaying nucleus; it is because the logarithm function is involved that the range of half-lives is so huge: from microseconds to billions of years. After returning to the Soviet Union, Gamow found relativity and quantum mechanics under assault for being un-Marxist; two decades later Soviet physicists were able to defend themselves using the atomic bomb, but this was still in the future. So Gamow decided to emigrate, even though being a famous young Soviet physicist, he was at the center of attention; Nikolai Bukharin once suggested to Gamow that he run the entire electric power of Moscow power plants through a copper wire impregnated with hydrogen and lithium to achieve controlled nuclear fusion; nice scheme for 1933! Gamow and his wife tried to paddle a canoe across the Black Sea to Turkey, but were caught in a storm and were lucky to come back in one piece. Gamow was sent to the Solvay Conference on nuclear physics as the Soviet representative; he insisted that his wife be brought along as his scientific secretary. They did not return. Gamow went to the United States, where he received a professorship at George Washington University, which is where he stayed for many years, working on Big Bang and stellar nucleosynthesis, consulting for the military, making a detour into deciphering the genetic code, and writing popular science books about a "Mr Tompkins" who explores the world of modern physics in his dreams.

Just as after reading Stanislaw Ulam's autobiography, my impression was: Wow, what a time, what people! We do not know what would have happened to Gamow had he stayed in the Soviet Union. His friend Matvey Bronstein was shot as an enemy of the people. His friend Lev Landau was imprisoned but released after a letter to Stalin by the great physicist Pyotr Kapitsa. His friend Dmitri Ivanenko spent a year in the GULag. In the United States Gamow acquired new friends, among them Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller.

[Farid Hasanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuing my interest about famous physicists' lives, I turned my eyes to life of George Gamow, nuclear physicist and cosmologist. It is an autobiography , in which he tells the story of his life from studying physics in USSR, starting to hate his country because of restrictions on scientific matters (theory of relativity was determined to be "wrong" by high officials as it is not supported by dialectical materialism , core of soviet philosophy) , as well as constant restrictions for him to go abroad due to the politics of isolation. Arriving to US after some years , he felt how "free" this country is in terms of scientific endeavour and individualistic rights.

Gamow had extraordinary skill of imagination, due to which he was quite prolific in generating new ideas and tackling problems from different fields (even though most of these ideas were turning out to be wrong). In the book quite a few physics problems he was working on are touched upon , but , nevertheless , without going too deep into them. Overall , pretty good book , recommended to read for people interested in physics history.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended a very short sort of lecture by Gamow at Texas A&M University about 1966. He was about 6' 6" tall and around 400 pounds; his necktie made it a third of the distance to his belt. He talked only a few minutes, and I suspect he and my physics teacher who introduced him had enjoyed a few vodkas. The teacher was giggling like Laurel and Hardy in the film "Blotto". He took one question (about the identity of gravitational and inertial mass) and just wrote a formula with Greek letters on the blackboard, and that was it. Gamow taught at the University of Colorado in Boulder and is buried in Boulder.

Gamow wrote well and had an interesting life. Most of this book is about his first 40 or so years.

[Annie Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've ever read about the history of modern physics, you have most likely come across George Gamow, his books, or his delightful sense of humor. It was in Doomsday Men, I think, that I found out that Gamow had written an autobiography of sorts. (I discussed that book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6....)

More a rambling list of interesting tidbits than an autobiography, this book tells one interesting story after another. They are not usually interesting in terms of physics, especially, but in terms of life, such as the story of his multiple attempts to leave the USSR with his wife Rho, and tidbits about other greats in modern physics like as Bohr and Einstein.

I almost did not finish this book, not being in the mood for a collection of anecdotes, but I'm glad I did. And if I ever teach classes on the history of physics again, I will certainly be skimming through this book for a few extra stories, although the lectures themselves will be based more on Gamow's books Thirty Years that Shook Physics and The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein.

[Michael M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very entertaining!

[George Mazurek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing!