Gamow

In the 1940s, Gamow latched on to the idea as way to explain how all the atomic elements came to be, forged in the “fireball” that would have filled the cosmos in its earliest moments.

In Flashes of Creation, physicist Paul Halpern recounts Gamow’s and Hoyle’s interwoven stories.

We learn how Gamow, ever the scientist, roped in physicist Niels Bohr to test ideas about why movie heroes always drew their gun faster than villains — a test that involved staging a mock attack with toy pistols.

Gamow’s devil-may-care attitude wore on his colleagues, and his excessive drinking took its toll.