 DonateLooking to fill out a bingo square for reading about a scientific discovery that changed the world. Below are a few suggestions:
The evolution of Charles Darwin : the epic voyage of the Beagle that forever changed our view of life on earth / Diana Preston. When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles–invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist–he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection. Drawing on a rich range of revealing letters, diary entries, recollections of those who encountered him, and Darwin’s and FitzRoy’s own accounts of what transpired, Diana Preston chronicles the epic voyage as it unfolded, tracing Darwin’s growth from untested young man to accomplished adventurer and natural scientist in his own right. Darwin often left the ship to climb mountains, navigate rivers, or ride hundreds of miles, accompanied by local guides whose languages he barely understood, across pampas and through rainforests in search of further unique specimens. From the wilds of Patagonia to the Galápagos and other Atlantic and Pacific islands, as Preston vibrantly relates, Darwin collected and contrasted volcanic rocks and fossils large and small, witnessed an earthquake, and encountered the Argentinian rhea, Falklands fox, and Galápagos finch, through which he began to discern connections between deep past and present. Darwin never left Britain again after his return in 1836, though his mind journeyed far and wide to develop the theories that were first revealed, after great delay and with trepidation about their reception, in 1859 with the publication of his epochal book On the Origin of Species . Offering a unique portrait of one of history’s most consequential figures, The Evolution of Charles Darwin is a vital contribution to our understanding of life on Earth.
Unravelling the double helix : the story of DNA / Gareth Williams. Unraveling The Double Helix tells the story one of the greatest triumphs of modern science. Unraveling the Double Helix covers the most colorful period in the history of DNA, from the discovery of “nuclein” in the late 1860s to the publication of James Watson’s The Double Helix in 1968. These hundred years included the establishment of the Nobel Prize, antibiotics, x-ray crystallography, the atom bomb and two devastating world wars–events which are strung along the thread of DNA like beads on a necklace. The story of DNA is a saga packed with awful mistakes as well as brilliant science, with a wonderful cast of heroes and villains. Surprisingly, much of it is unfamiliar. The elucidation of the double helix was one of the most brilliant gems of twentieth century science, but some of the scientists who paved the way have been airbrushed out of history. James Watson and Francis Crick solved a magnificent mystery, but Gareth Williams shows that their contribution was the last few pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle assembled over several decades. The book is comprehensive in scope, covering the first century of the history of DNA in its entirety, including the eight decades that have been neglected by other authors. It also explores the personalities of the main players, the impact of their entanglement with DNA, and what unique qualities make great scientists tick.
Chilled : how refrigeration changed the world, and might do so again / Tom Jackson. The refrigerator may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of twentieth-century science–lifesaver, food preserver, social liberator. Part historical narrative, part scientific decoder, Chilled looks at early efforts to harness the cold at the ice pits of Persia (Iranians still call their fridges the “ice pit”) and ice harvests on the Regents Canal. As people learned more about what cold actually was , scientists invented machines for producing it on demand. The discovery of refrigeration and its applications features a cast of characters that includes the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, an expert on gnomes, a magician who chilled a cathedral, a Renaissance duke addicted to iced eggnog, and a Bavarian nobleman from New England. Refrigeration technology has been crucial in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last one hundred years, from the discovery of superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. Refrigeration is needed to make soap, store penicillin, and without it, in vitro fertilization would be impossible. And the fridge will still be pulling the strings behind the scenes as teleporters and intelligent-computer brains turn our science-fiction vision of the future into fact.
Heaven on Earth : how Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo discovered the modern world / L.S. Fauber. A vivid narrative that connects the lives of four great astronomers as they discovered, refined, and popularized the first major scientific discovery of the modern era: that the Earth moves around the Sun. Today we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500’s–of different nationality, age, religion, and class–collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world–and with it, the uneasy conditions of modern life. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family–that of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Fauber juxtaposes their scientific work with insight into their personal lives and political considerations, which shaped their pursuit of knowledge. Uniquely, he shows how their intergenerational collaboration was actually what made the scientific revolution possible. Ranging from the birth of astronomy and the methods of early scientific research, Fauber reveals the human story that underlies this civilization altering discovery. And, contrary to the competitive nature of research today, collaboration was key to early scientific discovery. Before the rise of university research institutions, deep thinkers only had each other. They created a kind of family, related to each other via intellectual pursuit rather than blood. These men called each other “brothers,” “fathers,” and “sons,” and laid the foundations of modern science through familial co-work. And though the sixteenth century was far from the an open society for women, There were female pioneers in this “family” as well, including Brahe’s sister Sophie, Kepler’s mother, and Galileo’s daughter. Filled with rich characters and sweeping historical scope, Heaven on Earth reveals how the strong connections between these pillars of intellectual history moved science forward–and how, without them, we might have waited a long time for a heliocentric model of the universe.
Medical firsts : from Hippocrates to the human genome / Robert E. Adler. An exploration of medical discoveries-from the ancient Greeks to the present “”Always help, or at least do no harm.”” Following this simple yet revolutionary idea, Hippocrates laid the foundation for modern medicine over two millennia ago. From the Hippocratic Oath to the human genome, from Pasteur’s germ theory to the worldwide eradication of smallpox, Medical Firsts brings to life 2,500 years of medical advances and discoveries. Organized chronologically, the book describes each milestone in a vivid capsule history, making it a fascinating and wonderfully readable resource for anyone interested in medicine’s past progress and future promise.Â
A brief history of creation : science and the search for the origin of life / Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves II. In this essential and illuminating history of Western science, Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves II seek to answer the most crucial question in science: How did life begin? They trace the trials and triumphs of the iconoclastic scientists who have sought to solve the mystery, from Darwin’s theory of evolution to Crick and Watson’s unveiling of DNA. This fascinating exploration not only examines the origin-of-life question, but also interrogates the very nature of scientific discovery and objectivity.
At the edge of time : exploring the mysteries of our universe’s first seconds / Dan Hooper. A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang–and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.
What is relativity? : an intuitive introduction to einstein’s ideas, and why they matter / Jeffrey Bennett. It is commonly assumed that if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole, it would suck Earth and the rest of the planets into oblivion. Yet, as prominent author and astrophysicist Jeffrey Bennett points out, black holes don’t suck. With that simple idea in mind, Bennett begins an entertaining introduction to Einstein’s theories of relativity, describing the amazing phenomena readers would actually experience if they took a trip to a black hole. The theory of relativity reveals the speed of light as the cosmic speed limit, the mind-bending ideas of time dilation and curvature of spacetime, and what may be the most famous equation in history: E = mc2. Indeed, the theory of relativity shapes much of our modern understanding of the universe. It is not “just a theory”–every major prediction of relativity has been tested to exquisite precision, and its practical applications include the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Something out of nothing : Marie Curie and radium / Carla Killough McClafferty. Marie Curie’s story has fascinated and inspired young readers for decades. The poor Polish girl who worked eight years to be able to afford to attend the Sorbonne in Paris became one of the most important scientists of her day, winning not one but two Nobel Prizes. Her life is a fascinating one, filled with hard work, humanitarianism, and tragedy. Her work with her husband, Pierre – the study of radioactivity and the discovery of the elements radium and polonium – changed science forever. But she is less well known for her selfless efforts during World War to establish mobile X-ray units so that wounded French soldiers could get better care faster. When she stood to profit greatly from her scientific work, she chose not to, making her methods and findings known and available to all of science. As a result, this famous woman spent most of her life in need of money, often to buy the very elements she discovered. Marie Curie’s life and work are given a fresh telling, one that also explores the larger picture of the effects of radium in world culture, and its exploitation and sad misuse.
The birth of mathematics : ancient times to 1300 / Michael J. Bradley. From 700 BCE to CE 1300, thousands of scholars from many different civilizations introduced mathematical ideas that established the foundations of arithmetic, number theory, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, as well as the related sciences of astronomy and physics. Although we know very little about specific individuals who made important mathematical discoveries in Babylonia, Egypt, and China, historians in Greece, India, Arabia, and medieval Italy preserved a more complete record, including the identities of some of the innovators. “”The Birth of Mathematics”” profiles 10 individuals from these four cultures during this time period as representatives of the numerous scholars who contributed to the field of mathematics.
The gene : an intimate history / Siddhartha Mukherjee. Â In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. “Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” ( The Washington Post ). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family–with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness–reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation–from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.).
Ten days in physics that shook the world : how physicists transformed everyday life / Brian Clegg. Developments in physics and physics-based engineering have led to some of the biggest transformations in the way we live out lives. Here, we journey back to ten separate days in history for a closer look at the breakthroughs that have shaped the modern world. From Isaac Newton’s law of motion, to Michael Faraday’s electrical field theory, as well as Maxwell’s equations that make TV, radio and cellphones possible. Comprising perfectly pitched science writing enlivened with a wealth of fascinating biographical detail, this eye-opening book is a celebration of power of physicists to bring about far-reaching, life-transforming change.
Space race : the epic battle between America and the Soviet Union for dominion of space / Deborah Cadbury.
The story of the race into space is marked by the greatest superpower rivalries, political paranoia, and technological feats of the twentieth century. But until now, we have known only half the story. With the end of the cold war, decades of secrets have been exposed, bringing with them a remarkable opportunity: the unmasking of the true heroes and villains behind one of the most exciting races in history. At the center of this exhilarating, fast-paced account are Wernher von Braun, the camera-friendly former Nazi scientist who led the American rocket design team, and Sergei Korolev, the chief Soviet designer and former political prisoner whose identity was a closely guarded state secret. These rivals were opposite in every way, save for one: each was obsessed by the idea of launching a man to the Moon. Korolev told his wife, “In every century men were looking into the sky and dreaming. And now I’m close to the greatest dream of mankind.” In attempting to fulfill this dream, Korolev was initially hampered by a budget so small that his engineers were forced to repurpose cardboard boxes as drafting tables. Von Braun, meanwhile, was eventually granted almost limitless access to funds by an American government panicked at the thought that their cold war enemy might take the lead in the exploration of space. Korolev, whose family life was destroyed by his long sentence in the Gulag, was constantly aware that any false move would finish his career or even his life. His rival, on the other hand, enjoyed remarkable celebrity in America and was even the subject of a 1960 biopic. In this extraordinary book, Deborah Cadbury combines sheeradventure and nail-biting suspense with a moving portrayal of the space race’s human dimension. Using source materials never before seen, she reveals that the essential story of the cold war is a mind-bending voyage beyond the bounds of the Earth, one marked by espionage, ambition, ingenuity, and passion.
What is real? : the unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics / Adam Becker. The untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity’s finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr’s students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favored practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.
The man who knew too much : Alan Turing and the invention of the computer / David Leavitt. Outlines the English mathematician’s efforts in devising a programmable calculating machine, his work in cracking the Nazi Enigma code, and how the revelation of his homosexuality led to his tragic imprisonment and suicide.
The monster’s bones : the discovery of T. Rex and how it shook our world / David K. Randall. In the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge with a mission to fill the empty halls of New York’s struggling American Museum of Natural History: Henry Fairfield Osborn, a privileged socialite whose reputation rests on the museum’s success, and intrepid Kansas-born fossil hunter Barnum Brown. When Brown unearths the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Montana wilderness, forever changing the world of paleontology, Osborn sees a path to save his museum from irrelevancy. With four-foot-long jaws capable of crushing the bones of its prey and hips that powered the animal to run at speeds of 25 miles per hour, the T. Rex suggests a prehistoric ecosystem more complex than anyone imagined. As the public turns out in droves to cower before this bone-chilling giant of the past and wonder at the mysteries of its disappearance, Brown and Osborn together turn dinosaurs from a biological oddity into a beloved part of culture. Vivid and engaging, The Monster’s Bones journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan. With a wide-ranging cast of robber barons, eugenicists, and opportunistic cowboys, New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.