Patton. Yamamoto. Montgomery. Zhukov. Rommel. Nimitz. Seven decades later, the names of the men who commanded the armies and navies in the great battles of World War II are still familiar. But as Stephen Budiansky shows persuasively in "Blackett's War," the outcome of the war hung on the work of a far more obscure group of fighters: the physicists, biologists and mathematicians who applied scientific thinking to battlefield problems. By teaching Allied military leaders to use their resources effectively and asking hard questions to challenge established wisdom, the scientists revolutionized warfare and contributed...