Showing titles in Science & Technology

This riveting biography from the American Bar Association visits the spectacular life of Edwin Land, breakthrough inventor. At the time of his death, he stood third on the list of our most prolific inventors, behind only Thomas Edison and one of Edison's colleagues. Land's most famous achievement was the creation of a revolutionary film-and-camera system that could produce a photographic print moments after the picture was taken.

John Dee was one of the greatest scientific minds of his time, but also one of the most controversial. He was a learned man in fields as varied as mathematics and astronomy, centuries before they became formalized fields of study, but he is better remembered for performing magic and alchemy. Instead of astronomy, he became renowned across England for astrology, and he was one of the country’s most notorious occult writers during his life.

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite...

The spark of life, fount of emotion, house of the soul - the heart lies at the centre of every facet of our existence. It’s so bound up in our deepest feelings that it can even suffer such distress from emotional trauma as to physically change shape. Practising cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar beautifully weaves his own experiences with the defining discoveries of the past to tell the story of our most vital organ. We see Daniel Hale Williams perform the first open heart surgery and Wilson Greatbatch invent the pacemaker - by accident.

Chi sono gli scienziati che hanno rivoluzionato la storia dell'umanità? Erano davvero dei "geni"? Barbascura X non ha dubbi al riguardo: non solo non lo erano, ma a ben vedere erano anche degli idioti. Pochi sanno delle boiate dette da Democrito, delle folli pratiche alchemiche di Newton, di quante idee si sia fatto fregare quel sociopatico di Tesla o di quanti sbagli abbia commesso Einstein. Quelli che definiamo geni non sono altro che esseri umani appassionati, instancabili ricercatori di conoscenza, con alle spalle un quantitativo inimmaginabile di errori.

Choose one: (A) Science gives us objective knowledge of an independently existing reality.... or (B) Scientific knowledge is always provisional and tells us nothing that is universal, necessary, or certain about the world.Made your choice? Welcome to the science wars. This long-running battle over the status of scientific knowledge began in ancient Greece, raged furiously among scientists, social scientists, and humanists during the 1990s, and has reemerged in today's conflict between science and religion over issues like evolution.

When Alexander Litvinenko set out for London's Millennium Hotel one November day in 2006, he already knew he was embroiled in a political conflict. The dissident Russian agent had, after all, fled Moscow to escape the wrath of Vladimir Putin and the country's feared security service. What he didn't realise was that the men he would drink with that afternoon were about to throw him into another battle: a brutal fight with a little-known but devastatingly toxic poison.

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST “A true-crime masterpiece written by a cold-case-cracking master.”—John Douglas, New York Times bestselling co-author of Mindhunter “Barbara Rae-Venter isn’t just the genealogy expert who helped capture the Golden State Killer—she’s an unsung hero who has...

Mr. Feynman was a brilliant and complicated man. He knew that his then-girlfriend, Arline, would die shortly after her tuberculosis diagnosis, but he married her anyway so he could take care of her. He emphasized the importance of learning rather than merely acquiring knowledge. He said that he did not need the Nobel Prize to validate his achievements, that the real litmus test would be the impact that he would make.

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation. During World War II, he achieved major breakthroughs in radar, played a key role in the Manhattan Project, and served as the lead scientific observer at the bombing of...

At age eleven, Sola Mahfouz was told she could no longer attend school. The Taliban threatened that any girl who dared to continue their education would have acid thrown in their face, be kidnapped, or worse. Confined to the walls of her home, Sola watched as the few freedoms of childhood were stripped away. She was forbidden to play, to sing, even to laugh. Her early teenage years were consumed by restrictions. Realising that she would have to either succumb to this life or find a way out, she decided on the latter.

In The Last Stargazers, Emily Levesque reveals the hidden world of the professional astronomer. She celebrates an era of ingenuity and curiosity and asks us to think twice before we cast aside our sense of wonder at the universe. 

The science behind the traits and quirks that drive creative geniuses to make spectacular breakthroughs What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world -- those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the...

Albert Einstein ist der Inbegriff des Genies. Kein Wissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhundert hat unser Verständnis vom Universum so revolutioniert wie er. Neben den teils verschlungenen Wegen zu seinen Theorien, widmet sich das Hörbuch auch dem Menschen, der diese Wege beschritt. Es beschreibt, wie Einsteins Kindheit in Deutschland, seine Arbeit im Schweizer Patentamt, aber auch sein komplexer Charakter und die daraus folgenden familiären Begebenheiten den großen Wissenschaftler formten.

Delve into the lives, inspirations, motivations and achievements of the greatest scientists in the world and through all time. Explore the stories of more than 85 of the world's most inspirational and influential scientists with this innovative and bold book of biographies. From mathematicians to meteorologists, geologists to geneticists, each scientist is presented through a combination of stimulating words. 

Edison era un paraculo e Tesla un sociopatico, Lavoisier ha assassinato l'alchimia e Curie ha scoperto una nuova chimica, Einstein era un disagiato che ce l'ha fatta e Galileo un provocatore, Darwin assaggiava la natura mentre Spallanzani la seviziava. Otto storie di scienza raccontate da Barbascura X a sé stesso... letteralmente! Ecco cosa succede quando si affida un podcast ad un pirata affetto da personalità multiple.

Wilhelm Reich and the Function of the Orgasm; Great Minds Series, Vol. 11 - the 2017 revised, updated and reformatted edition - is a study about one of the greatest authorities on the discovery of the bioenergy for modern science and medical science. The author understands his engagement for Reich as a contribution to the rehabilitation of one of the greatest but also one of the most misunderstood scientists of the 20th century.

In this “informative and delightful” (American Scientist) biography, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of Nikola Tesla, one of the twentieth century’s greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly...

Nuclear power has been and continues to be a mystery to many people. This book tells the story of the journey of an average individual who for over 40 years, because of unintentional turns of events, became an active member of the industry and learned to understand and support this challenging but rewarding technology. With global warming and growing demands for energy world-wide, nuclear power plants in conjunction with renewable energy sources is the most promising way to support our future generations.

The world's first programmable computer was the legendary ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert. Based on original interviews with surviving participants and the first study of Mauchly and Eckert's personal papers, ENIAC is a dramatic human story and a vital contribution to the history of technology, and it restores to the two inventors the legacy they deserve.