Molecular Storms

“Do we need more than physics to understand the world?”  Liam Graham first asked himself this question as a teenager and it has been the driving force behind his career ever since. After a degree in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge and a master’s in Philosophy at Warwick, he eventually found economics to be an appealing middle ground and completed a PhD at Birkbeck College, London.  To pay the rent, he taught English, developed and sold trading software and was the numbers’ guru for a boutique finance house.Liam’s 15 year academic career was mostly spent as an Associate Professor at University College London, working in one of Europe’s top Economics departments.  His research involved building mathematical models of an extremely complex system, the macroeconomy, and his work was published in all the top macroeconomics journals.  Whether working on philosophy or economics, he never stopped reading science and exchanging with scientists.  In 2018 he left UCL to concentrate on his original question and the wide-ranging, multidisciplinary and endlessly fascinating project it has become.

• Introduction.- Random Patterns.- The Molecular Storm.- The Joy of Thermodynamics.- The Engines of Creation.- From Big Bang to Big Freeze.- How Chemistry Works.- Lively Molecules.

“Graham displays a magisterial command of the material … . a thought-provoking reflection on the deepest of questions.” (Kirkus, Kirkus, kirkusreviews.com, November 3, 2023)“His grand tour of the physical world leaves little unexamined, starting with simple systems of gas molecules in a box, moving to the smallest, simplest living cells, then on to whole planets. Graham does a stunning job of connecting everything to the state of disorder we call entropy and to the driving force behind structures everywhere – the ‘molecular storms’ of his title.” (Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, New Scientist, newscientist.com, January 3, 2024)