A three-dimensional quantum gas atomic clock.
Science Photo Library
The Seven Measures of the World
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 …