A biography of the author's background which provides insight into his training in medicine and his opinions on the concepts and training that are necessary to be a good doctor. The aims of this book are to first show how coronary angioplasty was pioneered in Australia, Singapore and China. Second, it is to illustrate the founding of a long-awaited medical school in Xiamen, China where the author's ancestors originate. Third, it is to describe the reformation of healthcare, cardiology, medical research and Art academy in Singapore. Fourth, it is to demonstrate the vision and realization of the third Asia Pacific cardiovascular intervention block. Last but not least, this book describes the merging of East West culture, medicine, art and a personal Christian testimony. This book hopes to show that with hard work, determination and vision, any young man or woman should be able to write a similar life story of their own. It is particularly important for young doctors to learn how not to bring grief but goodness to their patients and relatives.This book also illustrates the history of the development of coronary intervention in China and the rise of the Asia Pacific region in this field. Finally, this book provides a unique, personal perspective in the convergence of Eastern and Western culture, medicine and art.

A principal aim of this first biography of Robert Le Rossignol, engineer of the Haber process, is to bring new evidence to the attention of the scientific community allowing a re-assessment of the origins of the 'Haber' process. However, the scope of the book is much wider and goes beyond the discovery of 'fixation' to account for a life distinct from Haber, one full of remarkable science, cruel circumstance, personal tragedy and amazing benevolence, the latter made possible by Haber's generous financial arrangement with Le Rossignol regarding his royalties from the BASF.

With a Foreword by Sydney Brenner (Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2002)This biography details the life of Paul Berg (Emeritus Professor at Stanford University), tracing Berg's life from birth, in 1926, to the present, with special emphasis on his enormous scientific contributions, including being the first to develop technology that led to gene cloning science. In 1980, Berg received a Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work.In addition to his contributions in the research laboratory, Berg orchestrated and oversaw a historic meeting at Asilomar, California that centered on a threatening controversy surrounding the perception by some of the harmful potential of recombinant DNA technology. This meeting did much to forestall this controversy and to put in place the regulation of recombinant DNA work, thus putting fears to rest.The recombinant DNA controversy was a historic outcome of the discovery of gene cloning. Notably, it represented a paramount example of scientific foresight and due diligence by the scientific community, rather than by regulatory entities in the United States and many other countries. The ultimate acceptance of gene/DNA cloning led to a new era of modern biology that thrives to the present.This book is aimed primarily at scientists and those in training. The book strives to simply provide information for the general reader, but is not specifically tailored for a general reading audience.While many books cover the recombinant DNA controversy, none have satisfactorily addressed this historic period and are often contradictory about the many who's, where's, and why's involved. Additionally, the great majority of these were written by non-scientists. This biography of Paul Berg provides access to numerous archived letters and documents at Stanford University not previously addressed, and to the chronology of events as recalled and documented by him, as well as other key personalities, many of whom were interviewed.

Charles Darwin's years as a student at the University of Cambridge were some of the most important and formative of his life. Thereafter he always felt a particular affection for Cambridge. For a time he even considered a Cambridge professorship as a career and sent three of his sons there to be educated. Unfortunately the remaining traces of what Darwin actually did and experienced in Cambridge have long remained undiscovered. Consequently his day-to-day life there has remained unknown and misunderstood. This book is based on new research, including newly discovered manuscripts and Darwin publications, and gathers together recollections of those who knew Darwin as a student. This book therefore reveals Darwin's time in Cambridge in unprecedented detail.

Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans, feminists, and propeller-headed scientists. With unprecedented candour, Mullane describes the chilling fear and unparalleled joy of space flight. As his career centred around the Challenger disaster, Mullane also recounts the heartache of burying his friends and colleagues. And he pulls no punches as he reveals the ins and outs of NASA, frank in his criticisms of the agency. A blast from start to finish, Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut, just in time for this latest generation of stargazers.

Charles Darwin's years as a student at the University of Cambridge were some of the most important and formative of his life. Thereafter he always felt a particular affection for Cambridge. For a time he even considered a Cambridge professorship as a career and sent three of his sons there to be educated. Unfortunately the remaining traces of what Darwin actually did and experienced in Cambridge have long remained undiscovered. Consequently his day-to-day life there has remained unknown and misunderstood. This book is based on new research, including newly discovered manuscripts and Darwin publications, and gathers together recollections of those who knew Darwin as a student. This book therefore reveals Darwin's time in Cambridge in unprecedented detail.

Few people have changed the world like the Nobel Prize winners. Their breakthrough discoveries have revolutionised medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. Nobel Life consists of original interviews with twenty-four Nobel Prize winners. Each of them has a unique story to tell. They recall their eureka moments and the challenges they overcame along the way, give advice to inspire future generations and discuss what remains to be discovered. Engaging and thought-provoking, Nobel Life provides an insight into life behind the Nobel Prize winners. A call from Stockholm turned a group of twenty-four academics into Nobel Prize winners. This is their call to the next generations worldwide.

A new cultural icon strode the world stage at the turn of the twenty-first century: the celebrity scientist, as comfortable in Vanity Fair and Vogue as Smithsonian. Declan Fahy profiles eight of these eloquent, controversial, and compelling sellers of science to investigate how they achieved celebrity in the United States and internationally-and explores how their ideas influence our understanding of the world. Fahy traces the career trajectories of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Stephen Jay Gould, Susan Greenfield, and James Lovelock. He demonstrates how each scientist embraced the power of promotion and popularization to stimulate thinking, impact policy, influence research, drive controversies, and mobilize social movements. He also considers critical claims that they speak beyond their expertise and for personal gain. The result is a fascinating look into how celebrity scientists help determine what it means to be human, the nature of reality, and how to prepare for society's uncertain future.

Reissued with a new preface by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 journey to the moon The years that have passed since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins piloted the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon in July 1969 have done nothing to alter the fundamental wonder of the event: man reaching the moon remains one of the great events--technical and spiritual--of our lifetime. In Carrying the Fire, Collins conveys, in a very personal way, the drama, beauty, and humor of that adventure. He also traces his development from his first flight experiences in the Air Force, through his days as a test pilot, to his Apollo 11 space walk, presenting an evocative picture of the joys of flight as well as a new perspective on time, light, and movement from someone who has seen the fragile earth from the other side of the moon.

An award-winning memoir and instant "New York Times" bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, "Brain on Fire" is the powerful account of one woman's struggle to recapture her identity.
When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she'd gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?
In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family's inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. "A fascinating look at the disease that . . . could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life" ("People"), "Brain on Fire" is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller "Benjamin Franklin," this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available.

How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.

Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book 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 mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.

These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

On July 17, 2012, the centenary of Henri Poincare's death was commemorated; his name being associated with so many fields of knowledge that he was considered as the Last Universalist. In Pure and Applied Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering and Philosophy, his works have had a great impact all over the world. Poincare acquired in his lifetime such a reputation that, both nationally and internationally, his life and career were made the object of various articles in the daily papers not only in France, but also in the USA. Some of his philosophical concepts have even caused sharp controversies in the Press (as we will discover in this book).This work presents an original portrait of Henri Poincare based on various press cuttings from The New York Times, The San Francisco Sunday Call, The Times, The Sun, The Washington Post that chronicled unknown anecdotes of his life (for example, his first name was actually not Henri, but Henry; he obtained his high school diploma in sciences with a zero in mathematics, etc.). Such an approach enables the discovering of many forgotten or unknown aspects of his scientific and philosophical works as well as his important role in the public sphere.

This book describes the life and times of a physician-scientist over the last half-century. Part One is about the author's struggle with colon cancer and the lessons he learnt from the experience; Part Two is about his life growing up, the pretzel bakery, his family, being educated at Bronx Science, Columbia College, Harvard Medical School, and his medical training at the Boston City Hospital and the NIH. Part Three, the major portion of the book, describes the author's experiences as a practicing physician and hematologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center over 40 years. It also presents his views on what it takes to be a good doctor and to practice good medicine. Part Four is about medicine today, the crisis in medical care and in obtaining affordable health insurance in the United States, and potential solutions to these problems. And finally, it also describes the author's views on how changes in America over the past few decades have transformed our society from that of the meritocracy as known in the early days to that of the present society dominated by financial considerations.

E A Milne was one of the giants of 20th century astrophysics and cosmology. His bold ideas, underpinned by his Christianity, sparked controversy - he believed two time scales operate in the universe.Struggling against poverty, Milne won five scholarships to Cambridge, but he never finished his degree. In World War I he was invited to develop Horace Darwin's device for anti-aircraft gunnery and after the Armistice his prowess in ballistics took him straight to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. By the age of thirty he was a Manchester professor and a Fellow of the Royal Society. At Oxford he battled to improve the university's attitude towards science, and established a world-centre of astrophysics. He suffered from Parkinsonism in his forties, the consequence of his having had encephalitis lethargica as a young man. However, buoyed by his Christian faith, he did not slacken his pace. When he died, twice widowed, the author - Milne's daughter - was a teenager.This book is born out of curiosity. The author's aim is to show the human face of science, how the course of her father's life was shaped by circumstance and by the influence of illustrious friends and colleagues such as Einstein, Eddington, G H Hardy, J B S Haldane, Hubble, F A Lindemann and Rutherford. Against all odds, Milne emerged as a scientific powerhouse - and a rebellious one at that.

A very personal account of one man s fight for survival and triumph over very adverse odds. It is also a heartfelt tribute to all those people, principally in the National Health Service (UK), who give so much to heal and support. One mid-summer evening in an English hayfield Jan McCourt was crushed beneath his 7-ton tractor. In an instant his life was changed forever. His lower back, hip and pelvis were virtually demolished. Lucky to be airlifted to hospital, luckier still even to be alive, he was later informed by the surgeon that the procedure would be akin to taking a polo mint, stamping on it and then piecing the broken bits back in their original position. The injury also played complete havoc with his digestive system. Enduring long weeks of unimaginable and at times quite terrifying pain, the toll on Jan s body also began to affect his mind."

Albert Einstein is an icon of the twentieth century. Born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, he is most famous for his theory of relativity, which is considered the founding principle of modern physics. He also made enormous contributions to quantum mechanics and cosmology, and for his work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. A self-pronounced pacifist, humanist, and, late in his life, democratic socialist, Einstein was also deeply concerned with the social impact of his discoveries. Much of Einstein's life is shrouded in legend. From popular images and advertisements to various works of theater and fiction, he has come to signify so many things: the quintessential absent-minded professor; the gentle eccentric; the pacifist; the super-human genius. In Einstein: A Biography, Jurgen Neffe presents a clear and probing portrait of the man behind the myth. He recounts Einstein's life with detail and accuracy, presenting a comprehensive account of the educational, religious, psychological and historical conditions that enabled Einstein to become the ber-physicist of all time. Unearthing new documents, including a series of previously unknown letters from Einstein to his sons, which shed a new light on his role as a father, Neffe also paints a rich portrait of the tumultuous years in which Einstein lived and worked. With a background in the sciences, Neffe describes and contextualizes Einstein's enormous contributions to our scientific legacy. He leads his readers through today's institutes and laboratories worldwide, where Einstein's work continues to thrill researchers and scholars. A bestseller in Germany, Einstein is sure to be a classic biography of the man and proverbial genius who has been called the brain of the [twentieth] century.

'If you want to read a book that moves you both at the level of sentence and the quality of language and with the emotional depth of its subject matter, then A Fortunate Woman is definitely the book you should be reading' Samanth Subramanian, Baillie Gifford Judge When Polly Morland is clearing out her mother's house she finds a book that will lead her to a remarkable figure living on her own doorstep: the country doctor who works in the same remote, wooded valley she has lived in for many years. This doctor is a rarity in contemporary medicine, she knows her patients inside out, and their stories are deeply entwined with her own. In A Fortunate Woman, with its beautiful photographs by Richard Baker, Polly Morland has written a profoundly moving love letter to a landscape, a community and, above all, to what it means to be a good doctor. 'Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 'Timely . . . compelling . . . a delicately drawn miniature' The Financial Times 'This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape' Kathleen Jamie, The New Statesman

This fascinating portrait of an amateur astronomy movement tells the story of how Charles Olivier recruited a hard-working cadre of citizen scientists to rehabilitate the study of meteors. By 1936, Olivier and members of his American Meteor Society had succeeded in disproving an erroneous idea about meteor showers. Using careful observations, they restored the public's trust in predictions about periodic showers and renewed respect for meteor astronomy among professional astronomers in the United States. Charles Olivier and his society of observers who were passionate about watching for meteors in the night sky left a major impact on the field. In addition to describing Olivier's career and describing his struggles with competitive colleagues in a hostile scientific climate, the author provides biographies of some of the scores of women and men of all ages who aided Olivier in making shower observations, from the Leonids and Perseids and others. Half of these amateur volunteers were from 13 to 25 years of age. Their work allowed Olivier and the AMS to contradict the fallacious belief in stationary and long-enduring meteor showers, bringing the theory of their origin into alignment with celestial mechanics. Thanks to Olivier and his collaborators, the study of meteors took a great leap forward in the twentieth century to earn a place as a worthy topic of study among professional astronomers.

This is the story of a boy raised up in a village in Poland during World War II, with his father deported to concentration camps throughout the war. Some years after he graduated from medical school, he serendipitously entered the then developing field of dialysis, and he eventually embarked on a career-long practice in the field, where he contributed to the development of a number of new inventions and therapeutic methods. The book contains 13 chapters covering the author's childhood, education, and his career-long contributions to the field of nephrology. The book includes inspirational stories of his patients; the struggles he faced in the course of getting his numerous inventions patented; his research work in the 1990s; his work of teaching and consulting; and not the least, his travels to interesting places unrelated to business. The book concludes with an epilogue summarizing his life, as well as his predictions regarding treatment of chronic renal failure in the future.

The Morse telegraph launched the electronic telecommunications industry and reduced the travel time of information from days, weeks and months to seconds and minutes. It was one of the most important breakthrough inventions of all time. George F. Botjer's examination of the creator of the telegraph is based on previously unpublished archival sources. It considers Samuel F. B. Morse, the creator of the first telegraph, and the ways in which place and time had an effect on the launch of his invention and his resulting fame, and how the invention affected the inventor himself.

This is a compilation of tributes to a gentleman who has impacted the field of biomedical engineering and musculoskeletal science for four decades through his research, his guidance and mentorships, his friendships, and his love for the field, family, and friends. It provides readers with a view of how one man can impact so many.

A terrifying diagnosis. An unbreakable bond. And one unforgettable journey. Cameron Powell has always struggled with goodbyes. On the day his marriage ends, he finds out his mothers cancer has returned -- and this time there may be no escape. Faced with the prospect of more chemo and surgery, his German-born mother, Inge, vows to conquer a 500-mile trek across Spain, and Cameron pushes aside his fears to walk by her side. Joined by a misfit band of adventurers -- a politically incorrect Spaniard, a theatrical Frenchwoman, a teenager whos never been far from home -- Cameron and Inge write a fierce and funny travelogue about the rocky heights and hidden valleys of the Camino de Santiago. But the hardest stretch comes three years later, when Inges health declines -- and Cameron, ready or not, must accept the challenge to remain as present to his mother as he can. As their journey shrinks to the room around a hospice bed, Cameron begins to record, in their blog, his real-time impressions of lifes most difficult voyage. The result is one of literatures epic love letters (Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land). Propelled by the searing immediacy of his own fear and sadness, this deeply-felt memoir opens up new insight into what it means to be a man, and takes us -- with wisdom, humour and an overflowing tenderness -- into one of the most challenging journeys true friends can ever take. If you like candid motherson relationships, humorous tales from the trail, and in-the-moment insights on living a life of purpose, then youll love this luminous, inspirational true story about pilgrimage, presence, and letting go.

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes's dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement. The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook's first Endeavour voyage, who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise. Back in Britain, the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery - astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical - that together made up the 'age of wonder'. In this breathtaking group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period's celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight to the miner's lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration.

Sir James Dewar was a major figure in British chemistry for around 40 years. He held the posts of Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge (1875-1923) and Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution (1877-1923) and is remembered principally for his efforts to liquefy hydrogen successfully in the field that would come to be known as cryogenics. His experiments in this field led him to develop the vacuum flask, now more commonly known as the thermos, and in 1898 he was the first person to successfully liquefy hydrogen. A man of many interests, he was also, with Frederick Abel, the inventor of explosive cordite, an achievement that involved him in a major legal battle with Alfred Nobel. Indeed, Dewar's career saw him involved in a number of public quarrels with fellow scientists; he was a fierce and sometimes unscrupulous defender of his rights and his claims to priority in a way that throws much light on the scientific spirit and practice of his day. This, the first scholarly biography of Dewar, seeks to resurrect and reinterpret a man who was a giant of his time, but is now sadly overlooked. In so doing, the book will shed much new light on the scientific culture of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and the development of the field of chemistry in Britain.

Mohamud Ege grew up in the heat and dust of northern Somalia, the son of a family of nomads who were kept constantly on the move by the need to find water and grazing for the camels and sheep which were their only possessions. When Mohamud was five, his father was killed by a snake. A wise uncle then suggested that Mohamud, alone of his family, should go to school - a rare privilege in their culture. To attend school, Mohamud had to sleep on a rush mat, survive for long periods on nothing but pancakes and do his homework by moonlight. The hardships did not prevent him from discovering the joy of reading books and developing a keen appetite for learning. By the time he was in his teens he was determined to break free of the poverty of the nomad life and become a doctor in the West. Thanks to hard work and help from his friends he managed to qualify as one of Somalia's first doctors, but he had to battle the strife and unrest of his native land, as well as prejudice and red tape from those in authority, for more than twenty years before he finally managed to qualify as a doctor in the UK. This is his story.