Showing titles in Science & Technology

Fifty-two inspiring and insightful profiles of history’s brightest female scientists. “Rachel Swaby’s no-nonsense and needed Headstrong dynamically profiles historically overlooked female visionaries in science, technology, engineering, and math.”—Elle In 2013, the New York Times...

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called "the Pope" by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics.

Galileo Galilei è il simbolo della scienza moderna, ma quanto sappiamo davvero della sua vita? Matematico, inventore, imprenditore e persino autore di oroscopi: Galileo è stato molte cose, spesso tutte insieme. Siamo del resto in un'epoca in bilico: da una parte le superstizioni medievali; dall'altra la nascita faticosa del metodo scientifico. Con la sua voce inconfondibile, ironica, colta, teatrale, Roberto Mercadini ci regala un viaggio affascinante nella vita e nel tempo di Galileo.

The compelling, beautiful narrative of Code Name God is one man's rags-to-riches story and, more profoundly, the vision of a world-class physicist seeking to integrate the findings of science, religion, and spiritual quest.

In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.

Marie Skłodowska Curie’s name is etched into the history of science as a pioneer, a groundbreaker, and an enduring symbol of perseverance. Born in Warsaw in 1867 under Russian occupation, she rose from modest beginnings to become one of the most celebrated scientists of all time. Her life story is not only about brilliant discoveries—it is also about overcoming barriers of gender, nationality, and circumstance with unwavering determination.

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. From building rockets to the handheld technology that governs our day-to-day lives, we are all in debt to the mathematical geniuses of the past. But the history of mathematics is warped; it looks like a sixteenth-century map that enlarges Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The Secret Lives of Numbers introduces listeners to a new group of mathematical boundary-smashers, those who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality.

A partir d'une quarantaine d'interviews exclusives et de multiples rencontres avec sa famille, ses proches, ses collaborateurs comme ses concurrents, Walter Isaacson a reconstitué d'une façon magistrale la vie, l'œuvre et la vision du monde d'un des plus grands innovateurs de notre XXIe siècle qui a su allier le plus haut degré de technicité avec le raffinement esthétique.

Discover medical science's extraordinary journey from a time when even the slightest cut held the threat of infection and death to today's era of routine organ transplants and daily headlines about the mysteries of DNA and the human genome. What major discoveries made this transition possible? Who were the fascinating individuals responsible for those discoveries, and what qualities prepared each of them for their unique roles in medical history? These 12 compelling lectures draw on the lives of medicine's greatest contributors to tell the human story behind the development of Western scientific medicine.

Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed - refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples - causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.

In this book, Prusiner tells the remarkable story of his discovery of prions - infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease but surprisingly contain no genetic material - and reveals how superb and meticulous science is actually practiced with talented teams of researchers who persevere. He recounts the frustrations and rewards of years of research and offers fascinating portraits of his peers as they raced to discover the causes of fatal brain diseases.

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 old. Above all, perhaps, Rutherford and the young men working under him were the first to split the atom, unlocking tremendous forces―forces, as Rutherford himself predicted, that would bring us the atomic bomb.

Stephen Hawking has dazzled readers worldwide with a string of bestsellers exploring the mysteries of the universe. Now, for the first time, the most brilliant cosmologist of our age turns his gaze inwards for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution. My Brief History recounts...

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is known around the world as the “Father of Psychoanalysis,” and for good reason. If anything, Freud’s first patient was himself. A sufferer of psychosomatic symptoms, Freud diagnosed himself as having a repressed antagonism against his father. From there, Freud began to build on his now famous concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression. And of course, there’s his famous theory on the structure of the mind, which has made Id and Ego a commonly used part of the English lexicon.

With insights into the cyclical nature of innovation and the indomitable spirit of human ingenuity, Bandwidth is a powerful saga that shines a light on how history may be repeating itself as the AI, quantum, and blockchain Boom cycle is taking hold.

Isaac Newton’s main body of work was as a physicist and mathematician. He was a part of a scientific revolution in the 17th century, which would fundamentally change the way that people would see the world. In the field of optics, he would advance our understanding of light and how we saw it.

Written in his early 60s, Tesla looks back on the events that shaped his life as the inventor of our modern world. Like many exceptional artists, scientists, and engineers, Tesla's senses and intellect worked on a higher level, which often afflicted him physically. Yet, he overcame, and used his special abilities and strong educational background to make electricity the servant of man.

In 2022 Elon Musk - one of the richest and best-known people on earth - made headlines worldwide with his bid to buy Twitter, and he is often in the news for his entrepreneurial exploits and his controversial tweets. Who is this boundary-pushing billionaire with grand plans of inhabiting Mars...

In 1676, Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote in a letter to philosopher Robert Hooke, "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants." By the time he died, Newton had become science's greatest giant, and every scientist who has followed him has stood on his shoulders. Newton is widely considered the most influential scientist in history, best known for the discovery of gravity and the subsequent laws of motion that he theorized.

Drawing on 40 years of research and a treasure trove of new information, Tesla: Wizard at War provides a comprehensive view of Tesla's discoveries, which continue to influence today's military technology and diplomatic strategies. One of the world's leading Tesla experts, Marc J. Seifer, offers new insight into the brilliant scientist's particle beam weapon (aka the "Death Ray") and explores his military negotiations with pivotal historical figures - including his links to Joseph Stalin, Vannevar Bush, General Andrew McNaughton, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.