Review of Cosmology's Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe by P. J. E. Peebles

Phillip Helbig


The Observatory, 141, 1280, 43–45 (February 2021)


This is a book review of Cosmology's Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe by P. J. E. Peebles. The subtitle is important; this is neither a cosmology book with obiligatory historical references, nor a history-of-science book on cosmology, but rather tells the stories, from a historical and personal point of view, of several lines of investigation which converged on what is now known as the `concordance model' or `standard model' of cosmology. There are equations, but the book is not overly technical and thus suitable as an overview of the topics it covers, even for non-experts, while copious references allow one to easily find more-detailed descriptions. (While it is an inside story, it is a story of science, with few details of Peebles's own life, though I was happy to read that the only programming language he knows is Fortran.) It is also very well written. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the first hundred years of modern cosmology.


info and local links to full paper | Google Scholar
directory of Phillip Helbig's abstracts
Phillip Helbig's publications
Phillip Helbig's research
Phillip Helbig's home page
last modified on Friday, February 12, 2021 at 07:38:13 PM by helbig@ascameltro.multivax.de (remove animal to reply)