Alan Lightman

The Discoveries

Great Breakthroughs in 20th-Century Science, Including the Original Papers

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

An extraordinarily accessible, illuminating chronicle of the great moments of scientific discovery in the 20th century, and an exploration into the minds of the remarkable men and women behind them. The last century has seen an explosion of creativity and insight that led to breakthroughs in every field of science: from the theory of relativity to the first quantum model of the atom to the mapping of the structure of DNA, these discoveries profoundly changed how we understand the world and our place in it. Alan Lightman tells the stories of two dozen breakthroughs made by such brilliant scientists as Einstein, Bohr, McClintock and Pauling, drawing on his unique background as a scientist and novelist to reveal the process of scientific discovery at its greatest.

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In this captivating and lucid book, novelist and science writer Alan Lightman chronicles twenty-four great discoveries of twentieth-century science--everything from the theory of relativity to mapping the structure of DNA.These discoveries radically changed our notions of the world and our place in it. Here are Einstein, Fleming, Bohr, McClintock, Paul ing, Watson and Crick, Heisenberg and many others. With remarkable insight, Lightman charts the intellectual and emotional landscape of the time, portrays the human drama of discovery, and explains the significance and impact of the work. Finally he includes a fascinating and unique guided tour through the original papers in which the discoveries were revealed. Here is science writing at its best-beautiful, lyrical and completely accessible. It brings the process of discovery to life before our very eyes.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Random House UK
• Seitenzahl: 592
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. November 2006
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 204mm x 131mm x 34mm
• Gewicht: 537g
• ISBN-13: 9780375713453
• ISBN-10: 037571345X
• Artikelnr.: 21398052

Autorenporträt

Alan Lightman

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
A Note on Numbers
1. THE QUANTUM
—“On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum,” by
Max Planck (1900)
2. HORMONES
—“The Mechanism of Pancreatic Secretion,” by William Bayliss and Ernest
Starling (1902)
3. THE PARTICLE NATURE OF LIGHT
—“On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation
of Light,” by Albert Einstein (1905)
4. SPECIAL RELATIVITY
—“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” by Albert Einstein (1905)
5. THE NUCLEUS OF THE ATOM
—“The Scattering of alpha and beta Particles by Matter and the Structure of
the Atom,” by Ernest Rutherford (1911)
6. THE SIZE OF THE COSMOS
—“Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud,” by Henrietta
Leavitt (1912)
7. THE ARRANGEMENT OF ATOMS IN SOLID MATTER
—“Interference Phenomena with Röntgen Rays,” by W. Friedrich, P. Knipping,
and M. von Laue (1912)
8. THE QUANTUM ATOM
—“On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules,” by Niels Bohr (1913)
9. THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN NERVES
—“On the Humoral Transmission of the Action of the Cardiac Nerve,” by Otto
Loewi (1921)
10. THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
—“On the Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics,” Werner
Heisenberg (1927)
11. THE CHEMICAL BOND
—“The Shared-Electron Chemical Bond,” by Linus Pauling (1928)
12. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
—“A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic
Nebulae,” by Edwin Hubble (1929)
13. ANTIBIOTICS
—“On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of Penicillium, with Special
Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B. Influenzae,” by Alexander
Fleming (1929)
14. THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF ENERGY IN LIVING ORGANISMS
—“The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues,” by
Hans Krebs and W. A. Johnson (1937)
15. NUCLEAR FISSION
—“Concerning the Existence of Alkaline Earth Metals Resulting from Neutron
Irradiation of Uranium,” by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann (1939) and
—“Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction,”
by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch (1939)
16. THE MOVABILITY OF GENES
—“Mutable Loci in Maize,” Barbara McClintock (1948)
17. THE STRUCTURE OF DNA
—“Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,” by James D. Watson and Francis H.
C. Crick (1953) and
—“Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate,” by Rosalind E. Franklin
and R. G. Gosling (1953)
18. THE STRUCTURE OF PROTEINS
—“Structure of Hæmoglobin,” by Max F. Perutz, M. G. Rossmann, Ann F.
Cullis, Hilary Muirhead, Georg Will, and A. C. T. North (1960)
19. RADIO WAVES FROM THE BIG BANG
—“A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s,” by Arno A.
Penzias and Robert W. Wilson and
—“Cosmic Black-Body Radiation,” by Robert H. Dicke, P. James E. Peebles,
Peter G. Roll, and David T. Wilkinson (1965)
20. A UNIFIED THEORY OF FORCES
—“A Model of Leptons,”" by Steven Weinberg (1967)
21. QUARKS: A TINIEST ESSENCE OF MATTER
—“Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering,” by M.
Breidenbach, J. I. Friedman, H. W. Kendall, E. D. Bloom, D. H. Coward, H.
DeStaebler, J. Drees, L. W. Mo, and R. E. Taylor (1969)
22. THE CREATION OF ALTERED FORMS OF LIFE
—“Biochemical Method of Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of
Simian Virus 40,” by David A. Jackson, Robert H. Symons, and Paul Berg
(1972)
EPILOGUE
Notes
Abridgments of Papers
Acknowledgments
Permission Acknowledgments
Index