Author Description

At the end of his career, Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality-a theory of everything. He failed, but others have taken up the challenge in a remarkable quest that is shedding light on unsuspected secrets of the cosmos. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology, while delving into the history of the centuries-long search for this holy grail of science. You trace the dream of a theory of everything through Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Weinberg, and other great physicists, charting their progress toward an all-embracing, unifying theory. Their resulting equations are the masterpieces of physics, which Dr. Lincoln explains in fascinating and accessible detail. Studying them is like touring a museum of great works of art-works that are progressing toward an ultimate, as-yet-unfinished masterpiece.