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The book covers the fascinating story of the unlikely friendship of Pauli and Jung. As you would expect the book covers the life history of each person, and notably so where both characters interacted with each other. In my opinion Pauli is something of an under-recognised figure in physics, he accomplished a lot through several important discoveries yet it seems that he isn't praised anywhere near as much as Einstein. This is something of a gross oversight in the physics community. Again, I'll re-iterate this is ''my opinion''. This book provides some non-mathematical details of the four major discoveries made by Pauli, as well as explaining the difficulties he had interacting with people and his recurring bouts of depression. It is on this latter point that Jung comes into the story.

The author appears to have done extensive research on both characters and made a good attempt to understand the life and work of both people. Where possible the author makes reference to letters and notes that were written by either of the key figures. There is not a lot of physics in this book but there is quite a lot written about mysticism, philosophy and the like. The mysticism line is explored through the number '137'. and hence the title of the book. This number is related to the fine structure constant of physics: it is one of the few constants of nature and is not something that can be (currently) derived. Pauli, like many other contemporary famous physicists, tried to derive this number and hence understand/discover a great truth of the universe. The dogmatic obsession with the number often lead to derivations that are closer to mysticism than physics.

The hope is, of course, that by understanding this number then a lot more of the universe can be understood. This seems to be a central cause of strife in Pauli's life: to understand the universe in greater depth, via science, without entirely neglecting his intrinsic human desires. Jung provides some insight into the cause of Pauli's depression and eventually helped to alleviate much of this problem in Pauli's life. This book covers these aspects well and shows where the research of the two scientists overlapped and how the two of them found appreciation of the other's life and work.

This book is worth reading if you enjoy reading about the history and life of famous scientists. It isn't heavy on maths or physics but there are a few explanations of some basic concepts behind Pauli's key ideas. Furthermore, there is a lot of exploration of various types of mysticism and philosophy and how they might relate to ideas in physics. It isn't the most thorough book to cover those topics but it covers the central topic, of the friendship between the two scientists, very well. I say that just in case anyone was expecting something entirely new with regards to 'deciphering the cosmic number'.