Directing his polemics against the pedantry of his time, Galileo, as his own popularizer, addressed his writings to contemporary laymen. His support of Copernican cosmology, against the Church's strong opposition, his development of a telescope, and his...

"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose...

From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematics, Professor E.T. Bell, comes a witty, accessible, and fascinating look at the beautiful craft and enthralling history of mathematics.Men of Mathematics provides a rich account of major...

Separating man from genius, Einstein offers a startling new portrait of the iconic physicist. Wild-haired eccentric, revolutionary scientist, peace activist, Albert Einstein is well established in the popular imagination. He is celebrated for his...

These lectures by a famous inventor offer an easy-to-understand introduction to the interactions of the universe's physical forces. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) delighted in introducing young minds to scientific inquiry, and he geared these talks to...

“A bright, shiny gift to popular-science collections.”―Booklist Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his...

Leonhard Euler's polyhedron formula describes the structure of many objects--from soccer balls and gemstones to Buckminster Fuller's buildings and giant all-carbon molecules. Yet Euler's formula is so simple it can be explained to a child. Euler's Gem...

The Extravagant Universe tells the story of a remarkable adventure of scientific discovery. One of the world's leading astronomers, Robert Kirshner, takes readers inside a lively research team on the quest that led them to an extraordinary cosmological...

Algebraic number theory introduces students not only to new algebraic notions but also to related concepts: groups, rings, fields, ideals, quotient rings and quotient fields, homomorphisms and isomorphisms, modules, and vector spaces. Author Pierre...

Superconductivity--the flow of electric current without resistance in certain materials as temperatures near absolute zero--is one of the greatest discoveries of 20th century physics, but it can seem impenetrable to those who lack a solid scientific...

What is 'nothing'? What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - a void - exist? This Very Short Introduction explores the science and the history of the elusive void: from Aristotle who insisted that the vacuum was impossible, via...

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of...

Huxley's classic lecture on evolution, human nature, and the way to true happiness Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the most prominent evolutionists of the late nineteenth century. A close companion of Charles Darwin, Huxley developed a...

In this book the author, a cognitive scientist explains how the brain evolved to store and use information, allowing our ancestors to control their environment, and why we think and act as we do. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it...

A unique compilation of logical teasers and lateral-thinking problems designed to stretch your brainpower and strengthen your mind.Riddles, paradoxes, and conundrums have been confusing and confounding people since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks...

In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduate students, mathematicians, and...

Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, renowned theoretical...

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks, where does the self come from--and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, "I" arise out of mere matter? If it...

In the early 1990s, a NASA-led team of scientists changed the way we view the universe. With the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) project, they showed that the microwave radiation that fills the universe must have come from the Big Bang—effectively...

In this technology-driven age, it's tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only...