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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
Graham Farmelo · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorRadioactive: 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.
Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
Abraham Pais, Roger Penrose · 560 pages
A biography of Albert Einstein, told through various scientific and technical correspondences, including those with Michele Besso. Pais discusses the world of physics before Einstein, during Einstein's time and the impact on the scientific world after his death.
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.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin · 721 pages
Biography of American physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
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
Passionate Minds
David Bodanis · 373 pages
"It was 1733 when the poet and philosopher Voltaire met Emilie du Chatelet, a beguiling - and married - aristocrat who would one day popularize Newton's arcane ideas and pave the way for Einstein's theories. In an era when women were rarely permitted any serious schooling, this twenty-seven-year-old's nimble conversation and unusual brilliance led Voltaire, then in his late thirties, to wonder, "W
A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein
Palle Yourgrau · 217 pages
It is a widely known but little considered fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. The two walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German-Austrian science in which they had grown up. What is not widely known is the
On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein
Jennifer Berne · 56 pages
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was one of the most brilliant and daring inventors and visionaries of his time. My Inventions is Tesla's autobiography, with focus on his major discoveries and innovations, including the rotating magnetic field, the magnifying transmitter, and the Tesla coil. His research laid much of the groundwork for modern electrical and communication systems, and his impressive accomplishments in
Archimedes and the Door of Science
Jeanne Bendick · 145 pages
Against the backdrop of Archimedes' life and culture, the author discusses the man's work, his discoveries and the knowledge later based upon it.
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie
Barbara Goldsmith · 320 pages
Draws on diaries, letters, and family interviews to discuss the lesser-known achievements and scientific insights of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, documenting how she was compromised by the prejudices of a male-dominated society.
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality
Manjit Kumar · 448 pages
Describes the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science as the author discusses quantum theory -- "an idea that ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century."
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
The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor
Ken Silverstein · 224 pages
Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments--building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion--were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into
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.
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
Against Medical Advice
James Patterson, Hal Friedman · 323 pages
Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck. From that day forward his life became a hell of irrepressible tics and involuntary utterances, and Cory embarked on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist to discover the cause of his disease. Soon it became unclear what tics were symptoms of his disease and what were side
Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein
Don Brown · 32 pages
An introduction to the work and early life of the twentieth-century physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized scientific thinking.
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.
Nikola Tesla, el genio al que le robaron la luz
Margaret Cheney · 387 pages
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,