The scientists : an epic of discovery / edited by Andrew Robinson.

Date:
2012
  • Books

About this work

Description

An intriguing and illuminating read for science buffs, those fascinated by the lives and minds of great men and women, and anyone curious about how we came to understand the physical world. Copernicus, Crick, Watson, Galileo, Marie Curie: these are some of the forty pioneers behind modern science whose stories are explored here. The scientists come from around the globe and represent multiple nationalities American, English, German, French, Dutch, Czech, Indian, Japanese, and more. Often unorthodox thinkers, they frequently had to struggle against hostile contemporaries to gain recognition for their ideas and discoveries. All the major scientific disciplines are covered, including astronomy, biology, biochemistry, chemistry, computing, ecology, geology, medicine, neurology, physics, and psychology, as well as mathematics-- Source other than Library of Congress.

Publication/Creation

London : Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Physical description

304 pages : 220 illustrations (some color), color map ; 26 cm

Contributors

Contents

On the shoulders of giants -- Universe. Nicolaus Copernicus: inventory of the solar system; Johannes Kepler: analyst of planetary motion; Galileo Galilei: laying the foundations of modern science; Isaac Newton: the laws of motion and gravity; Michael Faraday: seminal experiments in electromagnetism; James Clerk Maxwell: the electromagnetic nature of light and radiation; Albert Einstein: thought experiments in space, time and relativity; Edwin Powell Hubble: astronomer of an expanding universe -- Earth. James Hutton: the earth's stable system; Charles Lyell: earth's present as the key to its past; Alexander von Humboldt: adventurous explorer and pioneering ecologist; Alfred Wegener: meteorologist and proponent of continental drift -- Molecules and matter. Robert Boyle: experimental investigations into the nature of matter -- Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier: the founder of modern chemistry -- John Dalton: the development of atomic theory -- Dmitri Mendeleev: the creator of the periodic table -- August Kekulé: carbon chains, the benzene ring and chemical structures -- Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: the structure of complex biological molecules; Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman: molecular physicist and theorist of light -- Inside the Atom. Marie Curie and Pierre Curie: pioneers of radioactivity; Ernest Rutherford: penetrating the secrets of the atomic nucleus; Niels Bohr: leader in quantum research; Linus Carl Pauling: architect of structural chemistry and peace activist; Enrico Fermi: creator of the atomic bomb; Hideki Yukawa: Japan's first Nobel Laureate. Life. Carl Linnaeus: botanist who named the natural world; Jan IngenHousz: physiologist and discoverer of photosynthesis; Charles Darwin: the theory of evolution by natural selection; Gregor Mendel: the father of genetics and the laws of biological inheritance; Jan Purkinje: investigator of vision and pioneer of neuroscience; Santiago Ramón y Cajal: the fine structure of the brain; Francis Crick and James Watson: decoding the structure of DNA and the secret of life -- Body and mind. Andreas Vesalius: renaissance anatomist of the human body; William Harvey: experimental physician who discovered the circulation of blood; Louis Pasteur: revolutions in the treatment of disease; Francis Galton: explorer, statistician, psychologist and inventor of eugenics; Sigmund Freud: theorist of the unconscious and the founder of psychoanalyis; Alan Turing: the father of computer science and artificial intelligence; John von Neumann: mathematician and designer of the electronic computer; Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey: the origins of humankind.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-298) and index.

Type/Technique

Languages

Subjects

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    AB.D
    		Open shelves

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780500251911
  • 0500251916