Reviews (8)

An examined life
Before I start, let me say that, for me at least, this is one of the most fascinating and entertaining books I've ever read.But I'm a special case, as you'll see... The Monte Carlo method
Monte Carlo simulation was discovered by Stanislaus Ulam and today is used by millions in all walks of life. It is the basis for planning and decision making in for corporations and in all issues of public and private life. A Mathematician in Physics
For its greatest part, the book is about Ulam's encounter with other scientists. It's thus a must-have for all historian of science, with great details about the three important Ulam's acquaintances: Banach, Von Neumannand Fermi. However, it's not what is making this book an invaluabledocument.Read more

Subjects:  1. History & Philosophy    2. Mathematicians And Their Works    3. Mathematics    4. Science/Mathematics    5. Scientists - General    6. History / General    7. History of mathematics   

Reviews (5)

Vindicated genius
Joel Shurkin has done a reasonably good job in this book, and it is well worth reading if you have an interest in the history of technology and the forces that shape our times.Shockley was a very important player in the development of the transistor at Bell Labs, and his story has a lot to inform the reader about how scientists in an industrial laboratory work together in a situation that demands cooperation to get to the objective, and the competitive personalities that are found in people who excel.The story is usually told in a very oversimplified version like this:"Bardeen and Brattain invented the transistor and their boss, Shockley took the credit.He later went off the deep end into eugenics and racism."Shurkin shows that there was a whole lot more to the story and presents a much more nuanced and sympathetic portrait ofthis complicated man.
Shockley's industrial legacy is mostly negative
Shurkin gives a good recap of what is known about Shockley. With the added fillip that Shockley's contribution to the Nobel for the invention of the transistor was actually significantly less than the other co-winners.
The Rise and Fall of William Shockley
Shockley who helped give birth to the transistor (with John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and a couple of others who remain uncredited to this day) and a founding father of Silicon Valley became obsessed with issues of race, IQ and Eugenics towards the latter part of his life. Whatever achievements were in his past failed when it compared to the issues that dominated the bulk of his later career. He managed to alienate many of his contemporaries with his attitudes and beliefs.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography & Autobiography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Biography And Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Discrimination & Racism    7. Electric engineers    8. History    9. History Of Technology    10. Nobel prizes    11. Scientists - General    12. Scientists - Inventors    13. Social Darwinism    14. United States    15. Electricity, magnetism & electromagnetism    16. History / United States / 20th Century    17. History of engineering & technology    18. Popular science   

Reviews (20)

Does The World Need Another Astronaut Biography?
In the case of "Sky Walking," by Dr. Thomas D. Jones, the answer is a resounding "Yes." This book stands head and shoulders above many of the other works by former astronauts in terms of its story, style and substance. Immensely readable and presented at just the right level of detail, "Sky Walking" chronicles Dr. Jones' spaceflight career, which spanned more than a decade and included four Space Shuttle flights. His description of the sights, sounds and sensations of his first launch aboard Endeavour in April 1994 on mission STS-59, for which he was a Mission Specialist for the first Space Radar Laboratory flight (SRL-1), is the best I've ever read. He was Payload Commander for the SRL-2 mission (STS-68) in October 1994, and later flew on two additional Shuttle missions. STS-80, in addition to setting a Shuttle endurance record of 18 days in orbit, involved satellite deployment and retrieval. STS-98, in February 2001, delivered and installed the Destiny Laboratory Module for the International Space Station (ISS), a mission on which Dr. Jones made three spacewalks lasting more than 19 hours.
An outstanding insight into an underrated NASA decade...
This book was a wonderful read. The first thing I noticed was how generous the author was to all who worked with him - there are not too many astronaut autobiographies where you get a sense of the astronaut working as a team with hundreds of people who never see the limelight. This book gives a very clear and accurate impression of that. I'm guessing Jones was well-liked by everyone he worked with, and he's put as much dedication into this marvellous tale as he did into any flight.
So Well Written I Felt Airsick
This memoir is outstanding reading for anyone who is interested in being an astronaut.The author takes us along as he applies to NASA, interviews, and begins training as an "Ascan" (astronaut candidate).Completing his year of training, he awaits his first assignment to a shuttle crew, and subsequently goes on four shuttle missions.We get to experience every step along the way as he trains for each mission, and when the fateful day of lauch comes, we are there - stepping into the orbiter, strapping in, feeling every vibration and hearing every noise as the gigantic machine roars into liftoff.Then we go along with the author during his missions, including the joys and frustrations experienced, and ride along for the tense suspense of reentry.(Made all the more poignant as we recall the moments during the same procedures when the Challenger and the Columbia were lost.)
Read more

Subjects:  1. Adventurers & Explorers    2. Aeronautics & Astronautics    3. Astronauts    4. Astrophysics & Space Science    5. Biography    6. Biography / Autobiography    7. Biography/Autobiography    8. Extravehicular activity (Manned space flight)    9. Manned Space Exploration    10. Military    11. Science    12. Scientists - Astronauts    13. Scientists - General    14. Space flights    15. United States    16. Science / Astrophysics & Space Science   

Reviews (2)

medicine suppressed
On the website Educate-Yourself the Rife therapy is on the list forbidden cures. This book tels you why!

Rife Book Bombs
Poorly written.Disorganized.No new information.Not worth the time it takes to read it... or the price. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Alternative Therapies    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Health & Fitness    7. Health & Fitness / Alternative Therapies    8. Inventors    9. Rife, Royal R.    10. Science & Technology    11. Scientists - General   

Reviews (1)

A very good book for students and "real" scientist/engineers
Students who are really interested in physics, electrical engineering or related subjects would find this book informative and inspiring. Read more

Subjects:  1. 1850-1925    2. Biography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Electric engineers    5. Electrical Engineering (General)    6. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic    7. Engineering - General    8. Engineers    9. England    10. Heaviside, Oliver,    11. History    12. Science/Mathematics    13. Scientists - General    14. Technology    15. Biography: general    16. History of science   

Reviews (22)

Apollo: Epic Journey (how America won the cold war)
This is a very comprehensive read which takes you from the beginning of the space age through to what might have been if the momentum had not been lost around 1970.
Inspiring History of the Space Program
This book was a great resource to learn in depth about the history, people, technology and politics which was the genesis of the space program.Also, what the author captures uniquely well is the sense of imagination and wonder involved - the dream of space.That one reviewer dismisses this as 'childish' and 'inaccurate' is sad, because it's exactly that which inspired so many in America and the world, to look to the stars and understand the reach of human potential.(That includes me - as a child, btw).The personalities of the people who helped drive the program are inseparable from what was accomplished, and I was fascinated to hear more about figures like Von Braun and the Apollo astronauts. Though the writing can wax a little poetic at times, it's more than balanced by a thorough level of historical and technical detail.
Gem for Space Nerds
I am a space nerd - majored in space physics, minored in space studies, worked in the space industry. Am enthralled with the Apollo program and have studied it extensively. This book does have a few minor errors, but they in no way detract from the thorough examination of the Apollo program. The book is worth its weight in charts, maps, diagrams and photographs alone. For example, I had never seen maps of the tracks of where each Apollo mission did its EVAs on the moon.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Aeronautics & Astronautics    2. Apollo project    3. General    4. History    5. History: American    6. Project Apollo (U.S.)    7. Scientists - General    8. Space flight to the moon    9. Technology & Industrial Arts    10. United States - 20th Century    11. Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology    12. Space travel & exploration    13. USA   

Editorial Review

Bernhard Riemann was an underdog of sorts, a malnourished son of aparson who grew up to be the author of one of mathematics' greatestproblems. In Read more

Reviews (66)

My own bit of random noise
In the unlikely event that someone might have been misled by a previous reviewer, who claimed to have found an error so serious that forced her to stop reading, a gentle reminder that ln(x) and log(x) are used interchangeably by mathematicians and other numerically-literate bipeds to denote the natural logarithm, at least when there is no possible confusion on the logarithm basis. This is not to say that you will not find any typos in this book -- you might or you might not -- but this one doesn't even deserve that name.
Quick&Dirty
NOT for the faint of (math) heart.I have started reading it a second time, trying to be a bit more careful as I hit the later chapters.This, for me, is where the trouble starts.I have to admit that I probably will not really understand the depth of the problem, although I do, as a very old one-time math major, appreciate its significance.
Amazing book
This is a really great book. Of course, it is an introduction to the Riemann hyphotesis, but you will enjoy reading (a lot). Actually reading this book is like reading a mystery novel. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Algebraic Geometry    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Geometry - Algebraic    4. History & Philosophy    5. Mathematics    6. Number Theory    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Scientists - General    9. Theory Of Numbers    10. Mathematics / Advanced   

Reviews (3)

Could have been much, much better . . .
This well-meant companion volume to the author's _Two Fisted Science_ is, unfortunately, not nearly as successful as graphic fiction. This time, five women artists tell the stories of five women scientists. While trying to focus on lesser-known people, Ottaviani finally broke down and included a fore-and-aft pair of shorts on Marie Curie. If you've read Watson's _The Double Helix,_ you may already have heard of Rosalind Franklin, who came very close to discovering the essential shape of DNA before Crick and Watson -- had she only not moved in the wrong direction on a couple of minor points (and possessed a less abrasive personality). Barbara McClintock picked up a Nobel for her work on the corn genome, you'd really never know what her field was from the badly written story (though the art is okay). Birut� Galdikas has become the world's leading authority on orangutans (yes, she's still out there in the jungles of Borneo) and you'll learn a lot about them -- and her -- from Anne Timmons's nicely done piece. But the story of mathematician Lise Meitner is also pretty indistinct. The best of the collection, actually, is Carl Speed McNeil's very well told and drawn story of the scientific side of Hedy Lamarr, of all people. Hedy (not Heddy) actually held some wartime patents in electronics (which became a crucial part of cell phone technology), but still was treated like a bimbo both by her first husband and by Louis B. Mayer after she escaped to the U.S. This book could have been much, much better.

Mostly solid facts, comic book format
A single writer partnered with 12 different artists in stories about 6 different women scientists.Some stories obviously succeed better thanothers. Enlightening Reading
Ottaviani's DIGNIFYING SCIENCE is a well illustrated and well written work. It does what a lot of good nonfiction has done recently - it focuses on those often forgotten people and events that were important andinfluential on the better known ideas and forces that shape our worldtoday. In this instance, Ottaviani has centered his attention on womenscientists, inventors and researchers who discovered, researched, andsupported major scientific achievements in the last century. He and thewomen artists who illustrate the book do a superb job of introducing us tothe contributions of these people who we never knew or knew little, but towhom we owe a collective, and enormous, debt. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography And Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. Fiction    6. Fine Arts    7. General    8. Scientists - General    9. Comics & Graphic Novels / General   

Editorial Review

What a difference a century makes. Doron Swade, technologyhistorian and assistant director of London's Science Museum,investigates the troubles that plagued 19th-century knowledge engineersin Read more

Reviews (9)

One of the great accomplishments of the 19th century
Charles Babbage and John Herschel, the astronomer, were preparing tables for the astronomical society.They needed to check the work of computations by humans, by different computers.The need for tables was particulary important for navigators.The source of error in the tables was clear, human fallibility.The manual production of tables, calculation, transcription, typesetting, and proofreading created opportunities for error.The engine of change in 1821 was the steam engine.Charles Babbage wanted to produce a machine to produce error-free tables.
Wonderful Engines
This book has 2 basic parts.First, is the discussion of Babbage's life and his computing engines.Second, is the author's modern-day story of attempting to complete Babbage's Difference Engine, a feat which Babbage himself was unable to do.I picked up this book for the first part.I wanted to learn about Babbage and how his engines worked.While the author gives a wonderful account of Babbage's life and methodology, he does not clearly describe HOW these engines function.I realize that the engines are extremely complex, but a chapter on the functioning of the Difference Engine trial piece and some diagrams on its operations would have been much appreciated. Unfortunately, as were Babbage's contemporaries, we are left mainly in dark as to how simply turning a crank can produce the necessary additions.The author also never fully explains the "method of finite differences" upon which the function of the difference engine is based. Doron Swade's Quest to Build a Difference Engine
This is the first book I've read on Charles Babbage, but I imagine that there are others that are better.First, this book seems to assume you've already read a book or two about Babbage before.It almost has an apologetic tone and seems to be an answer to what, I assume, have been slights against Babbage and his work.Second, this book is as much about the author and his quest to build a Difference Engine as it is about Babbage himself.If you want to hear about dealing with office politics in an British museum, you may find this interesting.Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. History    3. Science    4. Science/Mathematics    5. Scientists - Inventors    6. Science / General   

Editorial Review

E. O. Wilson, among the most prominent biologists working today, has made signal contributions to the field both large and small. As an entomologist, and especially as a student of several kinds of ants, he is famed among a small audience. He is better known for his work in the controversial subdiscipline of sociobiology for his formulations of island-biogeographic theory, and for his catastrophic view of modern extinctions. His lucid memoir, Read more

Reviews (16)

Wilson's Paradox
Edward Wilson's works unravel of their own accord.
One of the most interesting autobiographies ever
To me, it looks as if Wilson turned to be a great scientist against all odds. He did not come from the academic royalty, but from a broken family in Alabama. With strong intuition, lot of hard work and endless enthusiasm, he became one of the great scientists of the 20th century. A well written book, that would probably change the course of my life have I read it at the right age...

Excellent
An engaging and well-written account of the famous biologist's intellectual development from his early to his mature years and most important achievements. Nice discussions of some of his most interesting and important ideas punctuate this history. For example, there's a good section on the origin and development of his ecological ideas and the theory of island biogeography. Wilson is always a cautious but careful writer and thinker, but in a couple of the sections, he gets at least a little bit speculative and is all the more entertaining for it. For example, his discussion of the innateness of our fear of spiders and snakes is entertaining (Wilson himself is very phobic about spiders). Equally entertaining is the section where he discusses people's preference for a particular type of environment or ecology (subalpine or montane foothills parkland or partially wooded savannah with some lakes). Wilson attributes this to it being the environment where we originally evolved. Overall it counts as one of the best scientific biographies I've ever read. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1929-    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. General    7. Naturalists    8. Scientists - General    9. United States    10. Wilson, Edward Osborne,    11. Biography & Autobiography / General   

Reviews (4)

Faraday:humbleandtender of heart
"The Electric Life of Michael Faraday" by Alan Hirshfeld
An inspiring book
A remarkable and compelling biography in the clear words of this author. How important was Faraday to science, shaping the study of electricity and electromagnetism with his experiments. Also, the life of Faraday is so interesting since, as a person lacking normal education, show us that anyone can improve his knowledge by just reading good books, as faraday did, and also show us that the best way to learn a subject is by see it working. An inspiring book.

From Poverty to Famous
In 1791 when Michael Faraday was born, England was very much a class oriented society. And Faraday was not born to the upper classes. Instead he was apprenticed as a bookbinder. It must have been an unusually enlightened boss who encouraged Faraday to read/study/understand the science books that were passing through their hands. But that is what happened. Of particular importance was the 127 page entry on electricity in the 1797 edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.'
Read more

Subjects:  1. 1791-1867    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography And Autobiography    6. Biography/Autobiography    7. Faraday, Michael,    8. General    9. Great Britain    10. Physicists    11. Physics (General)    12. Science    13. Scientists - General    14. Science / General   

Reviews (39)

An excellent peice of literature
Sky of Stone, by Homer "Sonny" Hickam, is the sequel to his famous memoir, Rocket Boys, (October Sky). The story takes place in 1961, a year after his graduation from high school. Sonny, now eighteen, has just finished his first year of college at VPI, and is hoping to spend his summer with his mother in Myrtle Beach, lying on the beach, watching the girls go by, and dreaming about building rockets with Wernher Von Braun, the world famous rocket engineer. Out of the blue, his mother calls and says that he can't go to South Carolina; he to go back to Coalwood, West Virginia, the place he thought he was free from, to keep his father company. Sonny, shocked out of his socks, at first argues, but he eventually gives up knowing that he would not want to get on his mom's bad side. So, he heads up to Coalwood, filled with confusion pounding at his head. His father is a pretty stubborn man who can hold is own. Why would he need his company?
Hickam Makes It Seem So Easy
There are authors who make you say to yourself "this person writes wonderfully, but I could never write like this...."Then there are authors that make you think exactly the opposite."Wow, I can be a writer - it would be a snap to write like this."
Life Goes On in Different Places.
Homer served in the army in Viet Nam 1967-68, worked for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama; during his second stint in the army he learned to scuba dive in Puerto Rico.Then he returned to Huntsville, where he became a scuba instructor in 1973 at Aquaspace. In 1975, he started diving and researching shipwrecks along the Atlantic Ocean while writing articles for 'America History Illustrated' about his adventures under water.
Read more

Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Coal mines and mining    7. Literary    8. Novelists, American    9. Personal Memoirs    10. Scientists - General    11. Social life and customs    12. West Virginia    13. Biography & Autobiography / General   

Editorial Review

If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a Read more

Reviews (44)

Particle Physisists Made Accessible
As someone who barely made it through high school physics, I approached this book with some trepidation, but much like Sagan, Gleick gives understandable insight into the issues during the development of particle physics.Feynman's genius shows itself for a much longer period of his life than most physicists whose major contributions occur early in their careers.Feynman's passion for real solutions to real problems is made clear in dozens of anecdotes in the book.Three cheers and five stars for Gleick and Feynman.One marvels at both while reading this book.Insightful and incredible.

ARare Biography
There are a couple of biographies that ascend beyond the level of our expectations, William Manchester's two-volume biography of Churchill is one, and "Genius" is another.Dick Feynman makes a biographer's work easier, the depth of his character, genius, and humor are limitless.Physicist Richard Feynman was also an accomplished safecracker, the inventor of QED (quantum electrodynamics), and whatever he turned his hand to, be it bongo drums or painting, the results were invariably immortalized in museums or symphony orchestras.Feynman famously dipped an O-Ring into ice water to demonstrate the cause of the Challenger disaster, and estimated the kilotonnage yielded at the Trinity test by observing the displacement of a handful of shredded paper.
Feynman, A Genius
In Genius by James Gleick, the author writes a complete biography of Richard Feynman, spanning his entire life and achievements.Richard Feynman went to MIT and then Princeton, helped create the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, and worked at Cornell and Caltech.He was a very imaginative thinker with new, creative ideas.His work with quantum electrodynamics won him a Nobel Prize.He had to overcome the death of his wife and had to acknowledge that his friend at Los Alamos was a Russian spy.The author was compelled to recount the story because Richard Feynman was a very interesting man with a lively personality who was also a genius.He also had a very interesting life.The book not only discusses Feynman's life, but his contemporaries' lives as well.It brings the world of cutting-edge physics to the average person, in language that they can understand.Someone would be compelled to read this book because it has enough science for those that are interested, at the same time having enough human interaction for someone who does not have a science background.The book presents Feynman on a very personal, human level.He had a charismatic personality, an exciting life, and made great contributions to the field of science. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Feynman, Richard Phillips    7. History    8. Physicists    9. Physics    10. Scientists - General    11. United States    12. Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology   

Editorial Review

This must have been an extremely difficult book to write. Its subject, Alfred Loomis, never gave interviews during his lifetime and destroyed all his papers before his death. "Few men of Loomis' prominence and achievement have gone to greater lengths to foil history," writes author Jennet Conant. Had he not done these things, his name would be better known--and this probably wouldn't be the first biography about him. So who was Alfred Loomis? "He was too complex to categorize--financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, amateur, dilettante--a contradiction in terms," writes Conant. Loomis established a private laboratory in New York and hired scientists whose work in the 1930s wound up making possible both the radar and the atomic bomb. These developments were essential to Allied victory in the Second World War. Conant is perhaps the only person who could have pierced Loomis's obsessive secrecy and written this book; she grew up with Loomis's children and other members of his family. Her grandfather, Harvard president James Bryant Conant, was one of Loomis's scientists. Read more

Reviews (37)

Perhaps the greatest 'scientist agitator' of the 20th century
A great book.
Inspiring! Truth is more amazing than fiction- A great peice of American History
I thank Jennet Conant, the author for the deep courage and amazing amount of effort that must have gone into the production of this book. Mr. Loomis is of true hero quality yet he's not without his human flaws and failures. We get to see more than a glimpse into one of the greatest unsung heroes of science, technology, finance and World War II. I was truly inspired by the dedication, altruism and purposefulness of Mr. Loomis and many of the great people mentioned in the book. I also learn from their mistakes. There are times where the book gets a bit too verbose and into trivialities, but that's easy to forgive considering the degree of detail and historical accurateness that the author apparently intended.

Would that we had men of this caliber today...
In all my readings about science and men of science, it became quite clear that many of the most important discoveries were made by men who were not only from families of wealth and prestige, but also men who were trained for one area (such as law or diplomacy or finance) who later in life found that their avocations became their life-long pursuits; often to the good of mankind. In Alfred Loomis, there came a mixture of innate abilities in finance, physics, diplomacy, and plain-old curiosity, of the like we may never see again. Part of this is because of the type of education that Loomis received as a member of the elite class of American aristocracy. Part of it was the sheer genius that was Loomis.
Read more

Subjects:  1. (Alfred Lee),    2. 1887-1975    3. 20th century    4. Atomic bomb    5. Biography    6. Biography & Autobiography    7. Biography / Autobiography    8. Biography/Autobiography    9. Business    10. History    11. History Of Science    12. Loomis, Alfred L    13. Military - Weapons    14. New York (State)    15. Physicists    16. Research    17. Rich & Famous    18. Scientists - General    19. Tuxedo Park    20. U.S. History - World War II (Domestic Aspects)    21. United States    22. United States - 20th Century    23. History / Military / Weapons