The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

Basil Mahon · 246 pages

This is the first biography in twenty years of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists of our time and yet a man relatively unknown to the wider public. Approaching science with a freshness unbound by convention or previous expectations, he produced some of the most original scientific thinking of the nineteenth century ? and his discoveries went on to shape the twentieth century.

Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout

Lauren Redniss · 205 pages

Presents the professional and private lives of Marie and Pierre Curie, examining their personal struggles, the advancements they made in the world of science, and the issue of radiation in the modern world.

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

James Gleick · 532 pages

A gem of a book, about the life and mind of one of the most influential and iconoclastic characters in 20th century physics. Really a pleasure to read.

Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science

David Lindley · 272 pages

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.--Werner HeisenbergThat God would choose to play dice with the world is something I cannot believe.--Albert EinsteinNothing exists until it is measured.--Neils BohrThe remarkable story of a startling scientific idea that ignited a battle among the greatest minds of the twentieth

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II

Jennet Conant · 352 pages

"In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson · 704 pages

The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom an

Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science's First Family

Shelley Emling · 237 pages

"Marie Curie was the first person to be honored by two Nobel Prizes and she pioneered the use of radiation therapy for cancer patients. But she was also a mother, widowed young, who raised two extraordinary daughters alone: Irene, a Nobel Prize winning chemist in her own right, who played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb, and Eve, a highly regarded humanitarian and journalis

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor

John McPhee · 233 pages

Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass destruction on their own. McPhee tours American nuclear institutions with Taylor and shows us how close we are to terrorist attacks employing homemade nuclear weaponry.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth

Paul Hoffman · 301 pages

"Paul Erdos, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our time, forsook all creature comforts - including a hometo pursue his lifelong study of numbers. He was a man who possessed unimaginable powers of thought yet was unable to manage some of the simplest daily tasks." "For more than six decades, Erdos lived out of two tattered suitcases, crisscrossing four continents at a frenzied pace,

Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science

Ian Sample · 283 pages

This science story, the biggest of our time, spans four decades, weaving together the personal narratives and international rivalries behind the search for the "God particle," or Higgs boson. A story of grand ambition, intense competition, clashing egos, and occasionally spectacular failures, Massive is the first book that reveals the science, culture, and politics behind the biggest unanswered qu

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

Dava Sobel · 420 pages

A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and LoveInspired by her long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, which she has translated into English for the first time, Dava Sobel has written a book of great originality and power, a biography unlike any ever written on the man Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics – indeed of modern science al

Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation

Joao Magueijo · 278 pages

Publisher's description: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, and light travels at one fixed speed. This idea is considered a foundation of modern physics, but what if it is wrong? Theoretical physicist Magueijo presents the idea that light traveled faster in the early universe than it does today. The varying speed of light theory solves some of the most intractable problems in cosmolog

Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili · 368 pages

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics

Robert Gilmore · 196 pages

You've heard about Alice's adventures through the looking glass. Well, Alice is about to embark on another amazing journey. She's going to shrink again - to the size of a nuclear particle - but she's not going down the rabbit hole. She's headed for Quantumland. And what is Quantumland? Think of it as an intellectual amusement park smaller than an atom, where every ride, game, and attraction demon

The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 3

Richard Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew L. Sands · 384 pages

The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

John Gribbin · 647 pages

The Einstein Theory of Relativity

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz · 30 pages

The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins

Alan Guth · 358 pages

The classic big bang theory is great at describing what happened after the bang. Yet until recently, particle physicists and cosmologists were stuck on many questions that the big bang theory couldn't answer, including: What made the big bang BANG in the first place? If matter can be neither created nor destroyed, how could so much matter arise from nothing at all? Why can we only see a minute par

Understanding Physics 3 volumes in 1 - Motion, Sound & Heat + Light, Magnetism & Electricity + The Electron, Proton & Neutron

Isaac Asimov · 768 pages

Volume one traces the theoretical exploration of these concepts from an essentially Newtonian viewpoint. Newton's great achievement was in synthesizing the laws of motion and energy and in developing a unifying theory of universal gravitation. Concepts now considered common knowledge were at the time seen as so far fetched that even Newton himself felt that, although they must obey the natural law

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking · 209 pages

Stephen Hawking's ‘A Brief History of Time* has become an international publishing phenomenon. Translated into thirty languages, it has sold over ten million copies worldwide and lives on as a science book that continues to captivate and inspire new readers each year. When it was first published in 1988 the ideas discussed in it were at the cutting edge of what was then known about the universe. I

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

Lawrence M. Krauss · 202 pages

"Internationally known theoretical physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss offers provocative, revelatory answers to the most basic philosophical questions: Where did our universe come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And how is it all going to end? Why is there something rather than nothing?" is asked of anyone who says there is no God. Yet this is not so much a philosop

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life

Helen Czerski · 273 pages

"A physicist explains daily phenomena from the mundane to the magisterial. Take a look up at the stars on a clear night and you get a sense that the universe is vast and untouchable, full of mysteries beyond comprehension. But did you know that the key to unveiling the secrets of the cosmos is as close as the nearest toaster? In Storm in a Teacup, Helen Czerski provides the tools to alter the way

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

David Deutsch · 487 pages

"A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the uni

Coming of Age in the Milky Way

Timothy Ferris · 495 pages

From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those who study the universe have had to struggle against political and religious preconcepti