Luciano Maiani is at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and the INFN, Rome, Italy. He was director-general of CERN between 1999 and 2003
What are the three best popular-science books?
I do not currently read much popular science, although I did when I was at high school. In those days, I read popular-science books to get a glimpse of what I wanted to learn but had no time to study properly. This may explain why the book I am most attached to is the rather old – but to me unsurpassed – Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld.
My next choice is Carl Sagan’s Intelligent Life in the Universe, which for me opened new vistas and stimulated further thinking.
Finally, I choose The Character of the Physical Law by Richard Feynman, which had a similar effect on me as the Einstein-Infeld book. I am not really sure, however, if the Feynman book can be classified as popular science: although it contains lectures given to non-physicists, the content is at a rather sophisticated level. But it is really illuminating and deep, and I have had many occasions to go back to it.
If I can nominate a fourth book, it would be Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes, which is a real classic of cosmology.
What science books are you currently reading?
Despite what I said about not reading much popular science, I am, in fact, reading Gino Segrè’s popular work Einstein’s Refrigerator.
What else are you reading?
I am really enjoying Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by John L Stephens, an entrepreneur who was president of the Panama Railway Company. The book is an account of a journey that Stephens and his companion Frederick Catherwood made in about 1840 to Yucatan in modern-day Mexico. On this trip they discovered and described for the first time several Mayan sites like Uxmal. Stephens argues against the prevailing prejudice of the day, which was that these towns could not have been built by the ancestors of the indolent Indians.
It is a beautiful, candid travel story, in which the authors express astonishment at such impressive ruins and pieces of art emerging from the jungle. I visited the region some time ago and was equally fascinated by the beauty of Mayan sculptures and buildings.
Which popular-science book have you never read, but feel you ought to have tackled, and why?
There are several popular-science books that I started to read but got discouraged and gave up before finishing them. But I see no need to name them and do not think I should have finished them.
