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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering
"Healing the split between my mind and my body has been my life's
challenge. In the sixty years that I have practiced psychotherapy,
I have learned that the pathway to emotional health is through the
body. The underlying purpose of Bioenergetic Analysis has always
been to heal the mind-body split." - From the Introduction.
Alexander Lowen was a teacher, lawyer, medical doctor,
psychotherapist, writer, and a pioneer in the fields of
body-psychotherapy and psychobiology. His life and work are
recorded in this candid autobiography.
On August 18, 1977 a special 'Soddy Session' was held at the
Fifteenth International Congress of the History of Science,
Edinburgh, Scotland, with Dr. Thaddeus J. Trenn as Symposium
Chairman. This session was organized to commemorate the lOOth
anniversary of the birth of Fre derick Soddy (born September 2,
1877, Eastbourne, England; died September 22, 1956, Brighton,
England), who was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 'for
his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive
substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of
isotopes'. Soddy taught and/or carried out research at Oxford
University (where he was Lee's Professor of Chemistry), McGill
University (where he and Sir Ernest Rutherford proposed the
disintegration theory of radioactivity), University College, London
(where he and Sir William Ramsay demonstrated natural transmuta
tion), Glasgow University (where he formulated his displacement law
and concept of isotopes), llnd Aberdeen University. In addition to
his contributions to radiochemistry, he proposed a number of
controversial economic, social, and political theories. The present
volume contains the eight lectures presented at the symposium, two
additional papers written especially for this volume (Kauffman,
Chapter 4 and Krivomazov, Chapter 6), a paper on Soddy's economic
thought (Daly, Chapter 11), and three selections from Soddy's
works. Furthermore, an introductory account of Soddy's life and
work by Thaddeus J. Trenn as well as a Soddy chronology, and name
and subject indexes compiled by the editor are provided."
The true history of physics can only be read in the life stories of
those who made its progress possible. Matvei Bronstein was one of
those for whom the vast territory of theoretical physics was as
familiar as his own home: he worked in cosmology, nuclear physics,
gravitation, semiconductors, atmospheric physics, quantum
electrodynamics, astro physics and the relativistic quantum theory.
Everyone who knew him was struck by his wide knowledge, far beyond
the limits of his trade. This partly explains why his life was
closely intertwined with the social, historical and scientific
context of his time. One might doubt that during his short life
Bronstein could have made truly weighty contributions to science
and have become, in a sense, a symbol of his time. Unlike
mathematicians and poets, physicists reach the peak of their
careers after the age of thirty. His thirty years of life, however,
proved enough to secure him a place in the Greater Soviet
Encyclopedia. In 1967, in describing the first generation of
physicists educated after the 1917 revolution, Igor Tamm referred
to Bronstein as "an exceptionally brilliant and promising"
theoretician 268]."
In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion
Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate
velocities and plot trajectories, they recruited an elite group of
young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess,
transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American
satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.
Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women--known as
"human computers"--who broke the boundaries of both gender and
science. Based on extensive research and interviews, Nathalia Holt
offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both
where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're
heading.
During a pandemic lockdown full of pyjama dance parties, life
talks, and final goodbyes, a family helps a father die with
dignity. In April 2020, journalist Mitchell Consky received bad
news: his father was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer,
with less than two months to live. Suddenly, he and his extended
family -- many of them healthcare workers -- were tasked with
reconciling the social distancing required by the Covid-19 pandemic
with a family-based approach to end-of-life care. The result was a
home hospice during the first lockdown. Suspended within the chaos
of medication and treatments were dance parties, episodes of Tiger
King, and his father's many deadpan jokes. Leaning into his
journalistic intuitions, Mitchell interviewed his father daily,
making audio recordings of final talks, emotional goodbyes, and the
unexpected laughter that filled his father's final days. Serving as
a catalyst for fatherly affection, these interviews became an
opportunity for emotional confession during the slowed-down time of
a shuttered world, and reflect how far a family went in making a
dying loved one feel safe at home.
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was a hugely influential chemist,
inventor, and public lecturer who is recognised as one of the first
professional scientists. His apprenticeship to an apothecary in
1795 led to his introduction to chemical experiments. A chance
meeting with Davis Giddy in 1798 introduced Davy into the wider
scientific community, and in 1800 he was invited to a post at the
Royal Institution, where he lectured to great acclaim. This
two-volume memoir was published by his brother, Dr John Davy, in
1836, in response to Paris' biography of 1831, authorised by Lady
Davy (also reissued in this series). John Davy had additional
papers in his possession, and felt that Paris had failed to convey
Sir Humphry's character as a man and philosopher. Volume 2
concentrates on his researches (including on the safety lamp) and
travels in Europe. It includes poetry, and also memorials of Davy
by friends.
This book is about the author's life motivated by two pursuits:
medicine, his profession and flyfishing, his favourite recreation.
Each in their own way has provided him with challenges, enjoyment
and fulfilment.The book recounts the author's experiences as a
wartime school boy, post-war medical student, army doctor in Ghana,
and medical research worker at Hammersmith Hospital, London, the
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, the Methodist Hospital,
Houston and McGill University, Montreal. It describes his drastic
change in mid-career from gastroenterology to clinical lipidology
and his subsequent efforts to promote the lipid hypothesis of
atherosclerosis in the face of entrenched opposition from some
members of the cardiological establishment. Among his achievements
was the introduction of plasmapheresis to prolong the lives of
severely affected patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia
(FH), a hitherto fatal disorder, and he was among the first to
describe the efficacy of statins in FH patients in the UK. The book
also describes his leisure time activities including running in the
London and New York marathons, and the hazards thereof, and his
flyfishing expeditions to catch Atlantic salmon in Scotland and
Russia, bonefish in the Bahamas and brown trout in England.The
narrative covers the period from the Second World War to the
present day, during which there have been dramatic changes in
medical practice and social attitudes. It reflects the author's
experiences during the latter half of the 20th century, stretching
from the early days of penicillin to the introduction of statins,
and it concludes with his up to date appraisal of recent and
exciting advances in cholesterol-lowering therapy for
cardiovascular disease.
"A fitting biography of one of the most brilliant, acerbic, and
under-appreciated astrophysicists of the twentieth century. John
Johnson has delved deeply into a rich and eventful life, and
produced a rollicking account of how Fritz Zwicky split his time
between picking fights with his colleagues and discovering amazing
things about our universe."-Sean Carroll, author of The Big Picture
Fritz Zwicky was one of the most inventive and iconoclastic
scientists of his time. He predicted the existence of neutron
stars, and his research pointed the way toward the discovery of
pulsars and black holes. He was the first to conceive of the
existence of dark matter, the first to make a detailed catalog of
thousands of galaxies, and the first to correctly suggest that
cosmic rays originate from supernovas. Not content to confine his
discoveries to the heavens, Zwicky contributed to the United States
war against Japan with inventions in jet propulsion that enabled
aircraft to launch from carriers in the Pacific. After the war, he
was the first Western scientist to interview Wernher von Braun, the
Nazi engineer who developed the V-2 rocket. Later he became an
outspoken advocate for space exploration, but also tangled with
almost every leading scientist of the time, from Edwin Hubble and
Richard Feynman to J. Robert Oppenheimer and Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar. In Zwicky, John Johnson, Jr., brings this
tempestuous maverick to life. Zwicky not only made groundbreaking
contributions to science and engineering; he rose to fame as one of
the most imaginative science popularizers of his day. Yet he became
a pariah in the scientific community, denouncing his enemies, real
and imagined, as "spherical bastards" and "horses' asses." Largely
forgotten today, Zwicky deserves rediscovery for introducing some
of the most destructive forces in the universe, and as a reminder
that genius obeys no rules and has no friends.
Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computer age. He
created thefirst fully automated, program controlled, freely
programmable computer using binary floating-point calculation. It
was operational in 1941. He built his first machines in Berlin
during the Second World War, with bombs falling all around, and
after the war he built up a company that was taken over by Siemens
in 1967. Zuse was an inventor in the traditional style, full of
phantastic ideas, but also gifted with a powerful analytical mind.
Single-handedly, he developed one of the first programming
languages, the Plan Calculus, including features copied only
decades later in other languages. He wrote numerousbooks and
articles and won many honors and awards. This is his autobiography,
written in an engagingly lively and pleasant style, full of
anecdotes, reminiscences, and philosophical asides. It traces his
life from his childhood in East Prussia, through tense wartime
experiences and hard times building up his business after the war,
to a ripe old age andwell-earned celebrity.
Such Silver Currents is the first biography of a mathematical
genius and his literary wife, their wide circle of well-known
intellectual and artistic friends, and through them of the age in
which they lived. William Clifford is now recognised not only for
his innovative and lasting mathematics, but also for his
philosophy, which embraced the fundamentals of scientific thought,
the nature of the physical universe, Darwinian theory, the nature
of consciousness, personal morality and law, and the whole mystery
of being. Clifford algebra is seen as the basis for Dirac's theory
of the electron, fundamental to modern physics, and Clifford also
anticipated Einstein's idea that space is curved. The book includes
a personal reflection on William Clifford's mathematics by the
Nobel Prize winner Sir Roger Penrose O.M. The year after his
election to the Royal Society, Clifford married Lucy Lane, the
journalist and novelist. During their four years of marriage they
held Sunday salons attended by many well-known scientific, literary
and artistic personalities. Following William's early death, Lucy
became a close friend and confidante of Henry James. Her wide
circle of friends included Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George
Eliot, Leslie Stephen, Thomas Huxley, Sir Frederick Macmillan and
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
As world demand for electrical energy increases, it will be the
ingenuity and skill of brilliant electrochemists that enables us to
utilize the planet's mineral reserves responsibly. This
biographical dictionary profiles 85 electrochemists from 19 nations
who during the past 270 years have researched and developed ever
more efficient batteries and energy cells. Each entry traces the
subject's origin, education, discoveries and patents, as well as
hobbies and family life. The breakthroughs of early innovators are
cataloged and the work of living scientists and technicians is
brought up to date. An appendix provides a cross-referenced
timeline of innovation.
From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated
films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions.
But few fans know that behind these groundbreaking features was an
incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an
often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under
the radar for decades. In The Queens of Animation, bestselling
author Nathalia Holt tells their dramatic stories for the first
time, showing how these women infiltrated the boys' club of
Disney's story and animation departments and used early
technologies to create the rich artwork and unforgettable
narratives that have become part of the American canon. As the
influence of Walt Disney Studios grew---and while battling sexism,
domestic abuse, and workplace intimidation---these women also
fought to transform the way female characters are depicted to young
audiences. With gripping storytelling, and based on extensive
interviews and exclusive access to archival and personal documents,
The Queens of Animation reveals the vital contributions these women
made to Disney's Golden Age and their continued impact on animated
filmmaking, culminating in the record-shattering Frozen, Disney's
first female-directed full-length feature film.
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.
Paul Erdos was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as
a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published
almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he
probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history.
Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdos
would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and
announce, "My brain is open." After working through a problem, he'd
move on to the next place, the next solution. Hoffman's book, like
Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, reveals a
genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erdos's brand
of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairing schizophrenia.
Erdos never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with
ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people
around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sacks writes of Erdos: "A
mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdos was totally
obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for
nineteen hours a day until the day he died. He traveled constantly,
living out of a plastic bag, and had no interest in food, sex,
companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable to a human
life."The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite his
strangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who
referred to children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used to
represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for
himself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; and whose
only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open
mind. Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdos over the last 10
years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and
joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he
referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood,
and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdos is no
doubt missed. --Therese Littleton
Modesty, humor, compassion, and wisdom are the traits most
evident in this illuminating selection of personal papers from the
Albert Einstein Archives. The illustrious physicist wrote as
thoughtfully to an Ohio fifth-grader, distressed by her discovery
that scientists classify humans as animals, as to a Colorado banker
who asked whether Einstein believed in a personal God. Witty
rhymes, an exchange with Queen Elizabeth of Belgium about fine
music, and expressions of his devotion to Zionism are but some of
the highlights found in this warm and enriching book.
Faced with the BRCA mutation--the so-called "breast cancer
gene"--one woman must answer the question: When genetics can
predict how we may die, how then do we decide to live?
Eleven months after her mother succumbs to cancer, Jessica Queller
has herself tested for the BRCA gene mutation. The results come
back positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of
developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer
in her lifetime. Thirty-four, unattached, and yearning for marriage
and a family of her own, Queller faces an agonizing choice: a
lifetime of vigilant screenings and a commitment to fight the
disease when caught, or its radical alternative--a prophylactic
double mastectomy that would effectively restore life to her, even
as it would challenge her most closely held beliefs about body
image, identity, and sexuality.
Superbly informed and armed with surprising wit and style, Queller
takes us on an odyssey from the frontiers of science to the private
interiors of a woman's life. "Pretty Is What Changes" is an
absorbing account of how she reaches her courageous decision and
its physical, emotional, and philosophical consequences. It is also
an incredibly moving story of what we inherit from our parents and
how we fashion it into the stuff of our own lives, of mothers and
daughters and sisters, and of the sisterhood that forms when women
are united in battle against a common enemy.
Without flinching, Jessica Queller answers a question we may one
day face for ourselves: If genes can map our fates and their dark
knowledge is offered to us, will we willingly trade innocence for
the information that could save our lives?
Praise for "Pretty Is What Changes"
" "
"By turns inspiring, sorrowful and profoundly moving. Queller's
sense of humor and grace transform the most harrowing of situations
into a riveting and heartfelt memoir."--"Kirkus Reviews"
" "
"Seamless and gripping. Readers will be rooting for Queller and
her heroic decision to confront her genetic destiny."--"Publishers
Weekly"
" "
"Jessica Queller gives us a warm, chilling, unflinching look at
her personal journey of survival with style. The ending will
surprise you. Her prescience is astounding. Her courage is
inspirational. Brava Jessica "--Marisa Acocella Marchetto, author
of "Cancer Vixen"
Leonardo da Vinci's scientific explorations were virtually unknown
during his lifetime, despite their extraordinarily wide range. He
studied the flight patterns of birds to create some of the first
human flying machines; designed military weapons and defenses;
studied optics, hydraulics, and the workings of the human
circulatory system; and created designs for rebuilding Milan,
employing principles still used by city planners today. Perhaps
most importantly, Leonardo pioneered an empirical, systematic
approach to the observation of nature-what is known today as the
scientific method.
Drawing on over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks,
acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals
Leonardo's artistic approach to scientific knowledge and his
organic and ecological worldview. In this fascinating portrait of a
thinker centuries ahead of his time, Leonardo singularly emerges as
the unacknowledged "father of modern science."
Quantum Leap uses key events in the life of Polkinghorne to
introduce the central ideas that make science and religion such a
fascinating field of investigation. Sir John Polkinghorne is a
British particle physicist who, after 25 years of research and
discovery in academia, resigned his post to become an Anglican
priest and theologian. He was a professor of mathematical physics
at Cambridge University, and was elected to the Royal Society in
1974. As a physicist he participated in the research that led to
the discovery of the quark, the smallest known particle. This
cheerful biography-cum-appraisal of his life and work uses
Polkinghorne's story to approach some of the most important
questions: a scientist's view of God; why we pray, and what we
expect; does the universe have a point?; moral and scientific laws;
what happens next?
Marylebone has been home to its fair share of rogues, villains and
eccentrics, and their stories are told here. The authors also want
to remind the reader that alongside the glamour of Society, there
has also been hardship and squalor in the parish, as was
graphically illustrated in Charles Booth's poverty maps of London
in 1889. Over the past 10 years the Marylebone Journal has printed
historical essays on the people, places, and events that have
helped shape the character of the area. Some are commemorated with
a blue plaque, but many are not. This is not a check-list of the
grandees of Marylebone, though plenty appear in these pages. The
essays have been grouped into themes of: history, politicians and
warriors, culture and sport (from pop music and television to high
art), love and marriage (stories from romance to acrimonious
divorce), criminals, science and medicine, buildings and places,
and the mad bad and dangerous to know - those whose stories don't
fit a convenient box but are too good not to tell.
The Next Pandemic is a gripping book that confronts the most urgent
question facing our species: when, where, and how will the next
major outbreak arrive? Some of history's biggest killers have been
infectious diseases: The Black Death killed around 20 million in
the 14th century; Spanish Flu killed 50 million in 1918; the AIDS
pandemic has killed almost 40 million since 1981. There is no
guarantee that we can prevent another such disaster, but whenever a
new scare emerges, Dr. Ali Khan is sent to try. This book is Dr.
Khan's story of 25 years of containing these near misses, in his
long career at the Center for Disease Control. During the 1995
Ebola outbreak in Zaire, Khan worked among Red Cross workers
digging mass graves, rescuing struggling patients from
near-abandoned hospitals and ultimately finding Patient Zero. In
2001, he traveled to Washington, DC, summoned by a midnight phone
call, to prevent anthrax spores from spreading through the Senate
Office building's ventilation system. In 2002, he was called to
Hong Kong to quarantine victims of SARS, a contagious disease with
no cure and no vaccine. In each of these stories, Khan reconstructs
the chaos of those first moments on the ground, making
life-and-death decisions on limited and conflicting information,
with local, federal, and international authorities fighting to
contain both the virus and the panic. Through these and other
stories, Khan breaks down the sources of the next pandemic:
mutation; spillover from other species; lab accidents;
bioterrorism; and natural disasters. He shows that the danger of an
outbreak is more real than ever in a world of climate change and
global commerce, but that we need not only live in fear. His career
is a testament to the power of good information, habits, and poise
under pressure, as we work to fight whatever exotic contagion comes
next. The Next Pandemic is a vivid and necessary book about rampant
and violent diseases, and disasters narrowly averted; and the tools
we have to keep them at bay.
When Page Dickey moved away from her celebrated garden at Duck
Hill, she left a landscape she had spent thirty-four years making,
nurturing, and loving. She found her next chapter in southern
Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a
former Methodist church. In Uprooted, celebrated garden writer Page
Dickey reflects on this transition and on what it means for a
gardener to start again. In these pages, fol low her journey:
searching for a new home, discovering the ins and outs of the
landscape surround ing her new garden, establishing the garden, and
learning how to be a different kind of gardener. The sur prise at
the heart of the book? Although Dickey was sad to leave her beloved
garden, she found herself thrilled to begin a new garden in a
wilder, larger landscape. Written with humour and elegance,
Uprooted is an endearing story about transitions - and the
satisfaction and joy that new horizons can bring.
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