Decisive biotechnological interventions in the lottery of human life--to enhance our bodies and brains and perhaps irreversibly change our genetic makeup--have been widely rejected as unethical and undesirable, and have often met with extreme hostility...

Devoted to the foundation of mechanics, namely classical Newtonian mechanics, the subject is based mainly on Galileo's principle of relativity and Hamilton's principle of least action. The exposition is simple and leads to the most complete direct means...

For many students, calculus can be the most mystifying and frustrating course they will ever take. The Calculus Lifesaver provides students with the essential tools they need not only to learn calculus, but to excel at it. All of the material in this...

The life of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the man who gave living organisms two Latin names, is celebrated afresh in this newly revised and magnificently illustrated edition of the definitive biography. In his native Sweden, Linnaeus is revered by children...

Tracy Kidder's "riveting" (Washington Post) story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech...

In Infinite Ascent, David Berlinski, the acclaimed author of The Advent of the Algorithm, A Tour of the Calculus, and Newton’s Gift, tells the story of mathematics, bringing to life with wit, elegance, and deep insight a 2,500-year-long intellectual...

Honorable Mention in the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Nearly fifty years after his death, Albert Einstein remains one of America's foremost cultural icons. A thicket of materials, ranging from scholarly to popular, have been written,...

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Taking on prominent thinkers...

The gripping, entertaining, and vividly-told narrative of a radical discovery that sent shockwaves through the scientific community and forever changed the way we understand the world.Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of...

There is a vast range of astronomical equipment available to the amateur astronomer and this pocket-sized handbook will help the amateur make an informed choice about which instruments are best suited to his or her needs covering binoculars, telescopes,...

The solar system has always been a messy place in which gravity wreaks havoc. Moons form, asteroids and comets crash into planets, ice ages commence, and dinosaurs disappear. By describing the dramatic consequences of such disturbances, this...

Volume 1 of an important foundation work of modern physics Brings to final form Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and rigorously derives his general equations of field theory. 1891 edition.

Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University from 1950 until his death in 1968, Charles Loewner occasionally taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. After his 1955 course at Berkeley on continuous groups, Loewner's...

This text considers waves the great unifying concept of physics. With minimal mathematics, it emphasizes the behavior common to specific phenomena—earthquake waves studied by seismologists; waves and ripples on oceans, lakes, and ponds; waves of sound...

This graduate-level text employs a formal, classical viewpoint to survey the fundamentals of quantum optics. Its coverage includes the quantum theory of partial coherence and the nature of the relations between classical and quantum theories of coherence...

This history of physics focuses on the question, "How do bodies act on one another across space?" The variety of answers illustrates the function of fundamental analogies or models in physics, as well as the role of so-called unobservable...

Compact, clear, and precise in its presentation, this distinguished, widely used textbook offers graduate students and advanced undergraduates a diverse and well-balanced selection of topics.Subjects include the electrostatic field in vacuum; boundary...

"Singlemindedly devoted to its job of educating potential many-particle theorists…deserves to become the standard text in the field." — Physics Today"The most comprehensive textbook yet published in its field and every postgraduate student...

Astronomy as a science began with the Ionian philosophers, with whom Greek philosophy and mathematics also began. While the Egyptians and Babylonians had accomplished much of astronomical worth, it remained for the unrivalled speculative genius of the...

"Re-creates for the first time the full drama of Galileo's ill-starred encounter with the Inquisition. Publication of Galileo's monumental treatise, Dialogue on the Great World Systems, aroused a bitter controversy between the old science of Ptolemy and...