Book review – The Beauty of Falling by Claudia de Rham

We were kindly sent a copy of Claudia de Rham’s new book ‘The Beauty of Falling’, and asked irregular contributor Elinor Flavell to write this review. Claudia de Rham’s “The Beauty of Falling” is not just a book about gravity: it is a book about how humanity understands the universe. Starting with the different ways we can think about light, De Rham builds up the readers’ knowledge over seven chapters by talking about classical physics, Einstein’s special and general relativity, gravitational waves, and the curvature of spacetime – before finishing with her work on the graviton. With all that background information, you can fully appreciate how De Rham’s work on gravity fits into our wider understanding of the universe. Throughout the book she also links physics to parts of her frankly amazing life – including learning to fly a plane, scuba diving, the application process to become an astronaut, and her education as a physicist. A real strength of the book is De Rham’s depiction of…