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.

In this new biography of Chris Barnard we not only learn about the life of South Africa’s most famous surgeon, from his Beaufort West childhood through his studies locally and abroad to his prominent marriages – and divorces – but James Styan also examines the impact of the historic heart transplant on Barnard’s personal life and South African society at large, where apartheid legislation often made the difficulties of medicine even more convoluted.

The role of black medical staff like Hamilton Naki is explored, as is the intense rivalry that arose between other famous heart surgeons and Barnard. How did Barnard manage to beat them all in this race of life and death? How much did his famous charisma have to do with it all? And in the light of his later years, his subsequent successes and considerable failures, what is Barnard’s legacy today?

Styan covers it all in this fascinating new account of a real heartbreaker that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant.

Fear of contagion, isolated patients, a surge of overwhelming and unpreventable deaths, and the frontline healthcare workers who shouldered the responsibility of seeing us through a deadly epidemic: as we continue to confront the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, Taking Turns reminds us that we've been through this before. Only a few decades ago, the world faced another terrifying and deadly health crisis: HIV/AIDS. Nurse MK Czerwiec began working at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center's HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in the 1990s-a pivotal time in the history of AIDS. Deaths from the disease in the United States peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of effective drug treatments. In this graphic memoir, Czerwiec provides an insider's view of the lives of healthcare workers, patients, and loved ones from Unit 371. With humor, insight, and emotion, MK shows how the patients and staff cared for one another, how the sick faced their deaths, and how the survivors looked for hope in what seemed, at times, like a hopeless situation. Drawn in a restrained, inviting style, Taking Turns is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and resilience among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the AIDS epidemic.

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.

Dian Fossey's classic account of four gorilla families - one of the most important books ever written about our connection to the natural world For thirteen years Dian Fossey lived and worked with Uncle Bert, Flossie, Beethoven, Pantsy and Digit in the remote rain forests of the volcanic Virunga Mountains in Africa, establishing an unprecedented relationship with these shy and affectionate beasts. In her base camp, 10,000 feet above sea-level, she struggled daily with rain, loneliness and the ever-constant threat of poachers who slaughtered her beloved gorillas with horrifying ferocity. African adventure, personal quest and scientific study, GORILLAS IN THE MIST is a unique and intimate glimpse into a vanishing world and a vanishing species.

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.

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal science's astonishing predictive power.

How does it feel to know something about the universe that no one has ever known before? And why is mathematics so good at revealing nature's secrets?

This is the story of the scientists who, using mathematics, predicted the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles, and even antimatter.

The journey from prediction to proof transports us from seats of learning in Paris and Cambridge to the war-torn Russian front, to bunkers beneath nuclear reactors, observatories in Berlin and California, and huge tunnels under the Swiss-French border. From electromagnetism to Einstein's gravitational waves to Wolfgang Pauli's elusive neutrino, acclaimed science writer Marcus Chown takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the major breakthroughs of modern physics and highlights science's central mystery: its astonishing predictive power.

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.

Biologist James Watson and physicist Francis Crick's 1953 revelation about the double helix structure of DNA is the foundation of virtually every advance in our modern understanding of genetics and molecular biology. But how did Watson and Crick do it-and why were they the ones who succeeded? In truth, the discovery of DNA's structure is the story of a race among five scientists for advancement, fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and Linus Pauling. They were fascinating and brilliant, with strong personalities that often clashed. But it is Rosalind Franklin who becomes a focal point for Howard Markel. The Secret of Life is a story of genius and perseverance but also a saga of cronyism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and misconduct. Markel brilliantly recounts the intense intellectual journey-and the fraught personal relationships-that resulted in the discovery of DNA.

This is a scientific and philosophical autobiography written around a collection of Denis Noble's most significant papers. It traces a remarkable journey from na ve reductionism to a rigorous systems approach to living systems. It is rigorous because Denis Noble was one of the first biologists to construct computer models of cells and organs of the body. His theoretical work is entirely mathematically based, with no room for ambiguity. Far from the denigration of the systems approach as holistic 'hand-waving', his work is now regarded by pharmaceutical companies and regulators as the gold standard of modelling in the development of new medication.

Systems Biology is an idea in search of a definition. This book explains why this is true: it is an approach rather than a subject. Denis Noble's work is one of the clearest examples of the systems approach in practice since it reveals the nature of some of the forms of downward causation in multilevel analysis. The story will delight readers who like to see how scientific controversy is resolved, since many of the developments described in each chapter were highly controversial when they occurred.

Alone on the endless red-sand desert in the Australian outback, tracking Varanus giganteus, the perentie lizard that grows to be more than six feet long...for desert rat Eric Pianka, such adventures have led to a satisfying, if unusual, way of life, as well as a distinguished career as a field biologist.

In The Lizard Man Speaks, Pianka recounts more than thirty years of adventures in reptile studies. He tells of "lizarding" in the North American deserts, the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, and the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia. His vivid imagery draws the reader into a world where lions lurk in the darkness beyond a gecko hunter's lights, where being stranded by car trouble miles from the last outpost is a constant danger, and where the wilderness still deserves to be called wild.

Along the way, Pianka provides much general information about lizard ecology, the fire succession cycle, and the interaction of humans with the landscape. And he reveals the springs of his own determined spirit and love of solitude, describing a near-fatal boyhood accident and its shaping and character-building effect on the life that followed.

Best known outside the scientific community for the Nobel Prize in Physics he won in 1991, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was exceptional amongst scientists for the breadth and depth of his contributions in multiple fields of physics. He was also much ahead of his time in his desire to break down barriers between scientific disciplines and between fundamental and applied science. He was equally unusual in his willingness to explain the nature and purpose of his work to society at large and to young people in particular. Laurence Pl vert's fascinating work retraces the influences and experiences that moulded this complex, charismatic, charming and eclectic genius. It follows him from his unconventional childhood on the fringes of the old French aristocracy and in war-divided France, through his glittering school and early scientific career, up to the revolutionary breakthroughs in fields as diverse as superconductivity, liquid crystals, polymers and soft matter, culminating in the final consecration of the Nobel prize. Constructed from exclusive interviews with the physicist himself, his family, friends and colleagues, this biography immerses us in the work and character of a truly remarkable figure, a Renaissance man of the 20th century.

Extensively researched, this book traces the life and work of Abraham De Moivre as well as the state of probability and statistics in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first extensive biography of De Moivre and is based on recently discovered material and translations, including some of De Moivre 's letters.

The book begins with discussions on De Moivre 's early life in France and his initial work in pure mathematics with some excursions into celestial mechanics. It then describes his fundamental contributions to probability theory and applications, including those in finance and actuarial science. The author explores how De Moivre 's wide network of personal and professional connections often motivated his research. The book also covers De Moivre 's contemporaries and his impact on the field. Written in a clear, approachable style, this biography will appeal to historians and practitioners of the art of probability and statistics in a wide range of applications, including finance and actuarial science.

Combines the personal life story of Nobel Laureate Prof. Richard R. Ernst with the historical development of his invention, which led to the universally known MRI imaging process in the field of medicine Explains in an unusually open-hearted way the human side of research from its innermost circle, captivating both a general audience and those interested in science Explains the basics of MRI technology in comprehensible, yet lively language Focuses on an ethical approach to science and research for the benefit of society as a whole

Armin G Stromberg was arguably one of the founding fathers of the technique of stripping voltammetry frequently used in chemical analysis, yet he is virtually unheard of in Western scientific circles. He was a brilliant scientist, but due to his German ancestry he was interred in one of the NKVD GULAG camps at the outbreak of the Second World War. This semi-biographical history presents the complete set of 74 surviving letters written by Stromberg to his wife during this period. The letters provide both historians and the interested public with a rare and unique glimpse into the everyday living conditions of inmates in one of the GULAG labour camps. The book also traces Stromberg's life following his release. More importantly, it relates how he founded the thriving Tomsk school to the wider historical context of electroanalysis in the USSR, drawing conclusions about the rate of scientific development as compared to the West and showing how wet analysis' remained of vital importance to industry long after equivalent measurements were made elsewhere. Readers will also appreciate how Stromberg's invaluable contributions in the Tomsk School of Electroanalysis laid the foundations for the extensive metallurgical extraction and nuclear industries that dominated the entire Siberian region for many years. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the life and times of an important, yet often overlooked scientist of the Second World War.

Inspired by the life and times of Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859 , this biography follows Humboldt, who is considered the father of the Natural Sciences and in his day was as well known as Napoleon, and traces his childhood in what was then Prussia, his education at various Universities his training as a mining engineer and how he progressed into the sciences. Duringing the Age of Enlightenment, Humboldts journey to South America between 1799 and 1804 with Aime Bonpland, changed the course of both their lives and during this period of exploration, they sent back to Paris and Berlin some 6000 samples of new species, minerals and animals. En route the scientists collected a mass of detailed information - cartographical, geological, astronomical, botanical, anthropological and linguistic - that took a life time to decipher.

S Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Chandra, was one of the foremost scientists of the 20th century. The year 2010 marks the birth centenary of Chandra. His unique style of research, inward bound, seeking a personal perspective to master a particular field, and then pass on to another was so unique that it will draw considerable interest and attention among scholars. As Chandra elucidates in the preface, "The various installments describe in detail the evolution of my scientific work during the past forty years and records each investigation, describing the doubts and the successes, the trials and the tribulations. And the parts my various associates and assistants played in the completion of the different investigations are detailed." It is indeed a remarkable and rare document, fascinating to read and experience the joys, frustrations and struggles of a creative mind.

S Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Chandra, was one of the foremost scientists of the 20th century. The year 2010 marks the birth centenary of Chandra. His unique style of research, inward bound, seeking a personal perspective to master a particular field, and then pass on to another was so unique that it will draw considerable interest and attention among scholars. As Chandra elucidates in the preface, "The various installments describe in detail the evolution of my scientific work during the past forty years and records each investigation, describing the doubts and the successes, the trials and the tribulations. And the parts my various associates and assistants played in the completion of the different investigations are detailed." It is indeed a remarkable and rare document, fascinating to read and experience the joys, frustrations and struggles of a creative mind.

Walter Thirring is the last offspring of an Austrian family of scientists. In this moving narrative, he describes how he survived the Nazi occupation and became instrumental in reconstructing European science.Thirring is one of the last living physicists who worked on the greatest discoveries and with the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He recollects encounters with the old masters like Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Pauli and others as well as his collaborations with the present stars like Murray Gell-Mann and Elliott Lieb. The book presents the challenges faced when one of the major paradigm shifts took place, namely, the shift away from atomistic theory and Newtonian physics towards field theory and quantum mechanics. Every step is presented in clear, understandable language which reflects Thirring's extensive experience in training the next generation. Additionally, Thirring describes his fascinating and profound life experiences, growing up under Nazi occupation, serving in the war, striving to establish scientific excellence and in reaching out across the Iron Curtain. A true Renaissance man, he concludes by discussing his love of music, and it is clear that his passion for learning is only matched by his passion for music, a sampling of which can be found at .A work that inspires at every junction and is decisively re-readable, Thirring's autobiography is assuredly a must-have for anyone interested in science, physics and history.

The true story of a little-known mental health pioneer who revolutionised how we see the defining problem of our era: anxiety.

Panic, depression, sorrow, guilt, disgrace, obsessions, sleeplessness, low confidence, loneliness, agoraphobia … The international bestseller Self-Help For Your Nerves, first published in 1962 and still in print, has helped tens of millions of readers to overcome all of these, and continues to do so. But when it was first released, its diminutive author, Dr Claire Weekes, wasn't taken seriously. Seen as underqualified and overly populist by the medical establishment, she was dismissed even as thousands of letters from readers poured in, thanking her for helping to improve -- and in some cases to save -- their lives.

Notable for her insight into the anxiety state and the effectiveness of her techniques for addressing it, Dr Weekes' work provided an alternative to the brutal, invasive, and expensive treatments that were popular at the time. For a handful of dollars, Weekes offered treatment unavailable anywhere else. Few understood she was a serious scholar whose understanding also came from first-hand experience: in order to do her work, she had had to overcome a crippling anxiety disorder herself.

At a crucial moment in history, Dr Weekes' work showed people around the world that they were not alone in their suffering, and addressed an epidemic hiding in plain sight -- one that remains an urgent problem in our society today. This book is the first to tell her story.

This important book is an autobiographical account of doing scientific research in India. It provides an insight to the perseverance of a scientist from a develpong country. His relentless pursuit of excellence in chemistry for more than half a century is a remarkable source of inspiration to young scientists facing modern-day challenges.

This important book is an autobiographical account of doing scientific research in India. It provides an insight to the perseverance of a scientist from a develpong country. His relentless pursuit of excellence in chemistry for more than half a century is a remarkable source of inspiration to young scientists facing modern-day challenges.

Student and protege of Sigmund Freud, Helene Deutsch was one of the most influential psychoanalysts of her time. An early woman analyst, Deutsch was an ardent feminist and a leading proponent of Freud's controversial theories about the psychology of women. Deutsch was also one of the first prominent career women to combine a professional life with motherhood-even though she never resolved her own conflicts over those contradictory demands. At the time of her death in 1982 at the age of 97, Helene Deutsch was the last survivior of Freud's original circle from Vienna. This volume is a definitive account of the life and works of this remarkable-and enigmatic-woman. The author knew Deutsch personally and was given exclusive access to her papers after her death.The private life of Helene Deutsch was as unconventional as her professional life. While Felix Deutsch, a physician who specialized in psychosomatic medicine, was to remain her husband for fifty years and father her son, Martin, their relationship was highly eccentric. Roazen produces evidence that indicates Felix Deutsch may have been homosexual; also that their son was raised primarily by Felix, as Helene was more interested in her career than was Felix in his, and the Deutsches often lived continents apart.With the rise of Nazism, Helene Deutsch departed in 1935 for America She was welcomed in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and was made director of the Society's new institute for the training of analysts. Her two-volume The Psychology of Women, published in 1945, remains one of the foundations of modern analysis. Roazen's biography is an authoritative portrait of a pioneer of psychoanalysis, and one of the unique women of her day. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, cultural historians, and specialists in women's studies.