Interviews

Gary Saul Morson
Writer's Diary: Gary Saul Morson on How Fyodor Dostoevsky Created “An Intimate Bond Between Ideas and Personality”
In April 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested in St. Petersburg for participating in a circle of intellectuals who had been reading and discussing banned socialist literature. He was twenty-seven years... Read more...
Julian Preece
“Fictions That Contradict Themselves:” Julian Preece Sheds Light on Franz Kafka’s Darkness
In 1923, Franz Kafka met a young woman named Dora Diamant at a Baltic Sea resort and, for the first time in his life, left Prague to live with someone... Read more...
John Gribbin
Making Waves: John Gribbin on Why Erwin Schrödinger's Famous Paradox is the Cat's Meow
In the autumn of 1935, Erwin Schrödinger sat down to write a letter to Albert Einstein that contained, buried within its pages, one of the most famous thought experiments in... Read more...
No Napoleon Complex: Alan Strauss-Schom’s Critical View of the French Emperor
No Napoleon Complex: Alan Strauss-Schom’s Critical View of the French Emperor
The temperature at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, was unremarkable. What was remarkable was that Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who had outmaneuvered the greatest generals in Europe for two decades,... Read more...
Oliver and Other Twists: Paul Schlicke Reviews Charles Dickens' “Superb Lot” of Books
Oliver and Other Twists: Paul Schlicke Reviews Charles Dickens' “Superb Lot” of Books
In the winter of 1843, Charles Dickens was in financial difficulty, his recent novels had disappointed, and he was casting around for something that might restore both his fortunes and... Read more...
Martin Davis
It's All Logic: Martin Davis “Decodes” Alan Turing's Pioneering Work
In the summer of 1952, Alan Turing reported a burglary at his home in Wilmslow, England. The police investigation that followed led not to the prosecution of the thief but... Read more...
Graham Parkes
Thus Spoke Friedrich Nietzsche: Graham Parkes on the Philosopher’s “Understanding of the Human Mind”
In January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche stepped out of his lodgings in Turin and witnessed a horse being flogged by its driver in the Piazza Carlo Alberto. He threw his arms... Read more...
Helge Kragh
Niels Bohr's Quantum Leap: Helge Kragh Explains the Physicist's Work on Atomic Structure
On the morning of October 6, 1943, Niels Bohr was smuggled out of occupied Denmark in the hold of a small fishing boat, crossing the Øresund strait to neutral Sweden... Read more...
The Quantum of Proof: Frank Close Explains Why Paul Dirac's Antimatter Matters
The Quantum of Proof: Frank Close Explains Why Paul Dirac's Antimatter Matters
In 1932, a young physicist named Carl Anderson was studying cosmic ray tracks in a cloud chamber at Caltech when he noticed something that should not have been there. A... Read more...
Jochen Heisenberg
Not a “Nuclear” Family: Jochen Heisenberg Sheds Light on Werner Heisenberg's Work, Refutes Father's Role in the Atomic Bomb Project
In the spring of 1945, American intelligence officers arrived at a farmhouse in the German village of Urfeld and took Werner Heisenberg into custody. Operation Alsos, the Allied mission to... Read more...
Susan Sellers
Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Susan Sellers Explores The Works of the English “Literary Pioneer”
In the spring of 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. She was fifty-nine years old and had... Read more...
Jewel Spears Brooker
Poetry in Motion: Jewel Spears Brooker on Why T. S. Eliot Was “An Exceptionally Gifted Poet”
In the spring of 1922, Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine, received a submission that ran to more than four hundred lines, shifted between five languages, quoted from dozens of... Read more...