Helgoland

The instant Sunday Times bestseller — a dazzling story of rebellion and science.

In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, had retreated to the treeless, wind-battered island of Helgoland in the North Sea in order to think. Walking all night, by dawn he had wrestled with an idea that would transform the whole of science and our very conception of the world.

In Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and its bright young founders, who were to become some of the most famous Nobel laureates in science. It is a celebration of youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution. An invitation to a magical place.

Here, Rovelli illuminates competing interpretations of this science and offers his own original view, describing the world we touch as a fabric woven by relations. Where we, like every other thing around us, exist in our interactions with one another, in a never-ending game of mirrors.

A dazzling work from one of our most celebrated scientists and master storytellers, Helgoland transports us to dizzying heights, reminding us of the many pleasures of the life of the mind.