Yourgrau, Palle 1950-

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Yourgrau, Palle 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born October 8, 1950, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Education: Attended Cornell University and University of California, Los Angeles.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, MA. Office—Department of Philosophy, Brandeis University, Rabb 303/MS 055, 415 S. St., Waltham, MA 02454; fax: 781-736-8562. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic. Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, Harry A. Wolfson professor of philosophy.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Demonstratives, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

The Disappearance of Time: Kurt Gödel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe, expanded edition, Open Court (Chicago, IL), 1999.

A World without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Palle Yourgrau completed his studies at Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He later became the Harry A. Wolfson professor of philosophy at Brandeis University.

In 1999 Yourgrau published Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe. The book describes the unique friendship shared between Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel and how their opposing personality types were not an obstacle for their corresponding theories to benefit from the other's.

Jim Holt, writing in the New Yorker, observed that "Yourgrau does his best to redress his fellow-philosophers' neglect of the case that Gödel made against time." Holt added that "after ably tracing Gödel's life, his logical achievements, and his friendship with Einstein, Yourgrau elaborately defends his importance as a philosopher of time." Ahti Pietarinen, writing in the Review of Metaphysics, commented that Gödel Meets Einstein "would certainly not remain a last word on the subject, but it functions as a good source book on Gödel's cosmology and related philosophical problems. It should be remembered that Gödel himself took differing views on what counts as an intuitive notion of time, such as a change in the existing, and whether the concept of existence is something that cannot be relativized without destroying it."

Yourgrau published A World without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein in 2005. The account highlights the work of Gödel and explains why his legacy has been wrongfully overlooked. In particular Yourgrau discusses his belief that, if an object travels fast enough, it could travel back in time, something which he views as another type of space.

A.R. Cellura, writing in the Compulsive Reader, commented that the book "is a tour de force inviting its readers to wonder what a world that can escape the pitfalls of continuing scientific advance will be like a thousand years from now—a world far beyond the flat earth of Homer and the Ptolemaic beliefs of earlier times, or our own era's conventional certainties. Will it be a world without time?" Nature contributor Martin Davis explained: "The equations of general relativity, having superseded Newton's account of gravitation, provide one of the great successes of twentieth-century physics. In 1949, Gödel discovered unexpected solutions to these equations corresponding to universes in which no universal temporal ordering is possible. A hypothetical inhabitant of such a universe could, in principle, travel to his own past. Yourgrau argues that because time fails to exist in these Gödel universes, and because the differences between such universes and our own are accidental, time can't exist in our world either. I doubt that many readers would be convinced by this argument."

P.D. Smith, writing in the London Guardian, remarked that "this book resurrects Gödel's revolutionary idea and provides a fascinating account of this ‘intellectual bomb thrower.’" A contributor to Publishers Weekly observed that "all readers who enjoy a good thought experiment or having basic preconceptions about their world challenged will enjoy this." A contributor to Science News noticed that Yourgrau "provides fascinating insight about Gödel's relationship with Einstein and how this contentious idea challenged and inspired them both." A contributor to the Midwest Book Review observed that Einstein and Gödel's "discoveries and achievements are framed within the context of their unusual friendship."

Booklist contributor Ray Olson noted that Yourgrau "informs demanding passages on Gödel's work by sketching his life and personality as well as his thought." In a Foundations of Physics review, James F. Woodward stated: "I suppose that it is possible that Yourgrau's passion for his defense of Gödel as a serious philosopher may arise from a sense of injustice done to one he regards as deserving. And while exposing the curious inversion of Gödel's thought in his work on GRT from that in his earlier work on mathematical logic is interesting, it hardly seems something about which to become passionate." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found that "Yourgrau's narrative displays less concern for pandering to nonacademic stragglers." The same critic described the book as "intellectually provocative, of more interest to scholars than the general public, but accessible to the motivated sub-genius." In an American Scientist review, Gregory H. Moore mentioned that "those seeking a popular introduction to Gödel's unusual rotating models of the laws of general relativity should read Yourgrau's A World without Time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, September 1, 2005, Gregory H. Moore, review of A World without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, p. 464.

Booklist, January 1, 2005, Ray Olson, review of A World without Time, p. 786.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September, 2005, B.R. Parker, review of A World without Time, p. 122.

Discover, June, 2005, Chris Jozefowicz, review of A World without Time, p. 81.

Foundations of Physics, February, 2006, James F. Woodward, review of A World without Time, p. 321.

Guardian (London, England), April 28, 2007, P.D. Smith, review of A World without Time.

Isis, March, 2001, review of Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe, p. 203; March, 2001, John Dawson, review of Gödel Meets Einstein, p. 203.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, September, 1997, Dipikanta Chattopadhyay, review of The Disappearance of Time: Kurt Gödel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy, p. 201.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2004, review of A World without Time, p. 1142.

Mathematics Teacher, February, 2001, Andrew Linn, review of Gödel Meets Einstein, p. 154.

Midwest Book Review, July, 2005, review of A World without Time.

Mind, January, 1994, Leemon McHenry, review of The Disappearance of Time, p. 108.

Nature, May 5, 2005, Martin Davis, review of A World without Time, p. 19.

New Yorker, February 28, 2005, Jim Holt, review of Gödel Meets Einstein.

Philosophical Quarterly, April, 1996, Graham Nerlich, review of The Disappearance of Time, p. 258.

Philosophical Review, October, 1993, George N. Schlesinger, review of The Disappearance of Time, p. 602; January, 2002, Steven Weinstein, review of Gödel Meets Einstein, p. 148.

Physics Today, December, 2005, Klaus Hentschel, review of A World without Time, p. 60.

Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2005, review of A World without Time, p. 50.

Review of Metaphysics, September, 2001, Ahti Pietarinen, review of Gödel Meets Einstein, p. 170.

Science News, February 19, 2005, review of A World without Time, p. 127.

SciTech Book News, June, 2000, review of Gödel Meets Einstein, p. 1; June, 2005, review of A World without Time, p. 36.

Washington Post Book World, January 30, 2005, David Bodanis, review of A World without Time, p. 8.