Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics
The story of the science that shapes our world
The international bestseller
Published in eight languages
A Waterstones best popular science book of 2025
The story of the science that shapes our world
The premise of this book is simple: quantum physics is far from incomprehensible. On the contrary — it can be made accessible to all. By understanding a few foundational concepts, such as symmetry, the exclusion principle and the uncertainty principle, anyone can connect with the atomic world: the world that gave us the transistor, the laser and the MRI scanner, that explains why the sun shines and why the table is solid. The inherent complexity and counterintuitive nature of physics must not be used to mystify it — that is precisely the opposite of what a book like this should do.
We wrote it together — a physicist and a writer — because neither of us alone could have. It is the story of a handful of stubborn ideas and even more stubborn people, building on each other across a century, igniting revolutions that reshaped our understanding of the world. It ends, naturally, with a party: a hundred years of quantum physics, everyone invited, Planck at the piano, Feynman on the drums, and the cat purring quietly under the table.
“Deftly making the seemingly impenetrable world of quantum physics accessible to ordinary mortals.”
“Human intuition is a terrible guide in physics.”
“Everything in quantum can be traced back to this experiment. Grasp this, and you’re on your way to understanding (almost) everything.”
“Frank thinks and speaks in mathematics; I think and speak in words.”
“Yet now we see, as both align:
a deeper glance rewrites the line.”
First written in Dutch, now travelling. The blue cat gets around:
