Kategoria BISAC: Science >> History

Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin's foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of intelligent design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards's intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written,...

One of the most popular and widely read books of the Middle Ages, "Physiologus" contains allegories of beasts, stones, and trees both real and imaginary, infused by their anonymous author with the spirit of Christian moral and mystical teaching. Accompanied by an introduction that explains the origins, history, and literary value of this curious text, this volume also reproduces twenty woodcuts from the 1587 version. Originally composed in the fourth century in Greek, and translated into dozens of versions through the centuries, "Physiologus" will delight readers with its ancient tales of...

Exploring the lives of Jane Goodall, Rosalind Franklin, Rosalyn Yalow, Barbara McClintock, Rachel Carson, and the women of the Manhattan Project, Julie Des Jardins considers their personal and professional stories in...

The mystery of inheritance has captivated thinkers since antiquity, and the unlocking of this mystery--the development of classical genetics--is one of humanity's greatest achievements. This great scientific and human drama is the story told fully and for the first time in this book.

Acclaimed science writer James Schwartz presents the history of genetics through the eyes of a dozen or so central players, beginning with Charles Darwin and ending with Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller. In tracing the emerging idea of the gene, Schwartz deconstructs many often-told stories that were...

How did cells make the journey, one we take so much for granted, from their origin in living bodies to something that can be grown and manipulated on artificial media in the laboratory, a substantial biomass living outside a human body, plant, or animal? This is the question at the heart of Hannah Landecker's book. She shows how cell culture changed the way we think about such central questions of the human condition as individuality, hybridity, and even immortality and asks what it means that we can remove cells from the spatial and temporal constraints of the body and "harness them to...

During World War II, women scientists responded to urgent calls for their participation in the war effort. Even though newspapers, magazines, books, and films forecasted tremendous growth in scientific and technical jobs for women, the war produced few long-term gains in the percentage of women in the sciences or in their overall professional standing.

In Science on the Home Front, Jordynn Jack argues that it was the very language of science--the discourses and genres of scientific communication--that helped to limit women's progress in science even as it provided opportunities for a...

Albert Einstein s theory of general relativity describes the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time. But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it seemed, Einstein s mathematical code represented by six interlocking equations was one of the most difficult to crack in all of science. That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr s solution emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile...

In the late fifteenth century, clocks acquired minute hands. A century later, second hands appeared. But it wasn't until the 1850s that instruments could recognize a tenth of a second, and, once they did, the impact on modern science and society was profound. Revealing the history behind this infinitesimal interval, A Tenth of a Second sheds new light on modernity and illuminates the work of important thinkers of the last two centuries.

Tracing debates about the nature of time, causality, and free will, as well as the introduction of modern technologies--telegraphy,...

Recent scholarship has revealed that pioneering Victorian scientists endeavored through voluminous writing to raise public interest in science and its implications. But it has generally been assumed that once science became a profession around the turn of the century, this new generation of scientists turned its collective back on public outreach. "Science for All" debunks this apocryphal notion.

Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 and the outbreak of World War II to show that practicing scientists were very active in writing...

Rudolph Koenig was one of the more prolific and colourful instrument makers in the renowned nineteenth-century precision instrument trade of Paris. Beginning his career as a violin maker, in 1858 the young Prussian immigrant shifted his talents towards the growing field of acoustics. Altered Sensations is a portrait of his vibrant atelier, a place of construction, commerce and experiment. For over forty years it was also a popular meeting place for scientists, artisans, musicians and teachers. Using archival and collection research from across North American and Europe, David Pantalony has...

Well known as a politician and architect, Thomas Jefferson also made important contributions to science. He was elected the third president not only of the United States but also of that most august of scientific clubs, the American Philosophical Society, following in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse. He penned what was arguably the most important American scientific work of the eighteenth century, Notes on the State of Virginia. He designed architecture that promoted a healthy mind in a healthy body and the prevention of infectious diseases, and devised codes and a...