A three-dimensional quantum gas atomic clock. Science Photo Library
Piero Martin
Yale University Press
David Sumpter
Allen Lane
Blame the sundial. A dinner guest in a poem by the Roman writer Plautus, his stomach rumbling, complains that: “The town’s so full of these confounded dials / The greatest part of the inhabitants, / Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the streets”.
We have been slaves to number ever since. Not that we need complain, according to two recent books. Experimental physicist Piero Martin’s spirited and fascinating
