George Gamow: The Whimsical Mind Behind the Big Bang

"George Gamow: The Whimsical Mind Behind the Big Bang" details the life and scientific contributions of an influential and colorful 20th century scientist. George Gamow (1904-1968), a fun-loving Russian-born American physicist, was a science polymath who laid the foundation for the modern version of the Big Bang theory and led two colleagues to propose that the dying energy from that event should still pervade the cosmos. That signature of the Big Bang was indeed detected some years later, confirming that the universe had a definite beginning, on a "day without a yesterday," as one pioneer cosmologist put it. But the scientists who actually detected the Big Bang energy were totally unaware of the earlier Gamow-inspired work, which was forgotten and ignored by many. Some say it may have been due partly to difficulties of taking Gamow seriously because of his constant clowning and drinking. He once tried to outdraw Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr with toy pistols Wild-West style. He occasionally slipped fictitious names on scientific papers as a joke. He famously added the name of a physicist friend, Hans Bethe, to what became a landmark paper by his student, Ralph Alpher, and himself so the authorship would read, "Alpher, Bethe and Gamow." But for all of his clowning, Gamow was indeed a serious physicist who worked with many of the 20th century's most prestigious scientists, including Albert Einstein, Madame Curie, Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Dirac and Enrico Fermi. Practically all scholarly accounts of the Big Bang theory today cite Gamow's pioneering role in its development. He took a side excursion into biology in the 1950s when he played an influential role in efforts to break the DNA code. Although nominated, Gamow never won a Nobel Prize, but more than a half a dozen Nobel Laureates have cited Gamow's pivotal role in their work. Equally important was his role as an internationally acclaimed author of popular science books for lay audiences, books that inspired many youngsters to follow science careers, including several who later won Nobel Prizes.


About the Author
Beverly Orndorff is a retired science writer for The Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he worked for 40 years. He covered the U.S. space program at Cape Canaveral, Houston and NASA-Langley, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo moon landing missions, the Space Shuttle program and the Mars-landing Project Viking. He also covered the earliest kidney, heart and liver transplants; the birth of the nation's first "test tube" baby and interviewed dozens of Nobel Prize winners and other world-class scientists. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. Orndorff is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where he majored in physics. His choice of physics as his major, and thus his subsequent career as a science writer, was partly influenced and abetted by several George Gamow books he read during high school. He was motivated to write a biography of Gamow because no complete biography of this important physicist currently exists. Awards and honors Orndorff has received for his writing include the American Heart Association's Howard W. Blakeslee Award; honorary life membership in the Virginia Academy of Science (the first non-scientist to be so recognized); distinguished service awards from the Virginia Academy of Science and the American Chemical Society's Virginia Division; the Virginia Mass Communications Hall of Fame, and first recipient of the Science Museum of Virginia's Beverly Orndorff Award for Exceptional Service to the Public Understanding of Science. In addition to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Orndorff's articles have appeared in state, regional and national publications, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Technology Review and Soaring Magazine. A collection of his science columns, Magical Acts, Hypercubes and Pi, was published by the Science Museum of Virginia in 1999. He has been an invited lecturer on science topics at local universities, retirement communities and other groups. His pastimes include flying sailplanes, for which he holds private, commercial and instructor's licenses, photography and writing.