July 14, 2003
A Shortcut Through Time
I found the book "A Shortcut Through Time" By George Johnson, published by Alfred A Knopf, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41193-3 on the recent additions shelf of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.
It was the subtitle, "The Path to the Quantum Computer" , that really got me interested. I teach computer science at Mary Washington College and I didn't know the first thing about quantum computing before reading this book. Now I feel like I know something! Johnson's explanations are clear and to the point. They really made sense to me given my back ground in mathematics and the fact that I've been teaching computer science for lots of years. I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in science and with the ability to follow a technical discussion in general terms. He does an excellent job of exposition of a subtle and difficult subject. He states in the preface that "science writing involves spinning an illusion." The illusion is that the material came to be understood in a straight forward manner, and so it is easy for the reader to grasp and comprehend. It's not very easy to do that when discussing quantum mechanics and quantum computing, but George Johnson does a very good job at it. Read this book!
"A Quantum Leap in Cryptography" appeared in on July 15, 2003 in Business Week Online.