Traces the colorful, turbulent life of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, from the death of his childhood sweetheart during the Manhattan Project to his rise as an icon in the scientific community.

A "skillful, literate" (New York Times Book Review) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer.To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly...

A new intellectual biography of Ernest Rutherford, the twentieth century's greatest experimental physicist. Ernest Rutherford, who grew up in colonial New Zealand and came to Cambridge on a scholarship, made numerous revolutionary discoveries, among them the orbital structure of the atom and the concept of the "half-life" of radioactive materials, which led to a massive re-evaluation of the age of the earth-previously judged just 100 million years...

A tribute to the scientific contributions of Uranus planet discoverer William Herschel and his pioneering sister, Caroline, describes their establishment of surveying techniques that are still in use today, Caroline's cataloguing of nebulae, and William's discovery of infrared radiation.

DNA and RNA explores Friedrich Miescher's major scientific discovery in 1944 when he isolated DNA for the first time, forever changing our understanding of the building blocks of the human body. The book looks at Miescher's path to isolating DNA and the ways that his work influenced James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix in 1957. DNA and RNA describes the many ways that these discoveries are relevant to our lives, as well...

New Frontiers in Astronomy describes critical discoveries that shape the way we look at our universe, such as the Big Bang Theory and the acceleration of the universe. These discoveries paved the way for more recent leaps in the field of astronomy, namely the existence of dark matter. These discoveries also demonstrate the way teams of scientists work simultaneously to prove theories and draw important conclusions.

When Nicolaus Copernicus stated that Earth revolves around the sun, he initiated a centuries-long conflict between proponents of heliocentrism and those that maintained a geocentric view of the universe. The fight to establish the Copernican system, which began in 1543, would have very real consequences for astronomers like Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. This book provides an in-depth look at the development of Copernicus's theory, the effect it had...

The discovery of electricity fundamentally changed day-to-day life. Yet after electricity's discovery, scientists worked to find the best way to harness electrical currents. Today, semiconductors are known as the key components of transistors and integrated circuits. Semiconductors shows how Michael Faraday paved the way for three men (John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain) to invent transistors, changing history forever. The book investigates...

Disease has altered the course of history since the first humans walked the earth. Pandemics have felled empires, decimated populations, and caused untold human suffering. It wasn't until Sir Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 that scientists began to understand how to combat disease with antibiotics. This book looks at the scientists who paved the way for Fleming, the mechanics of antibiotics, and the looming challenges of antibiotic...

Until the late 1800s, scientists saw the atom much as the ancient Greeks had: as the smallest possible division of matter. Then, J. J. Thomson discovered the electron, establishing the existence of subatomic particles and launching an entirely new field of science, called particle physics. Through primary sources and beautiful photographs, this book brings the science of particle physics to stunning focus. The text discusses the state of science,...