Unearthing the amazing hidden stories of women who changed paleontology forever. For centuries, women have played key roles in defining and developing the field of vertebrate paleontology. Yet very little is known about these important paleontologists, and the true impacts of their contributions have remained obscure. In Rebels, Scholars, Explorers, Annalisa Berta and Susan Turner celebrate the history of women "bone hunters," delving into their fascinating lives and work. At the same time, they explore how the discipline has shaped our understanding of the history of life on Earth. Berta and Turner begin by presenting readers with a review of the emergence of vertebrate paleontology as a science, emphasizing the contributions of women to research topics and employment. This is followed by brief biographical sketches and explanations of early discoveries by women around the world over the past 200 years, including those who who held roles as researchers, educators, curators, artists, and preparators. Forging new territory, Berta and Turner highlight the barriers and challenges faced by women paleontologists, describing how some managed to overcome those obstacles in order to build careers in the field. Finally, drawing on interviews with a diverse group of contemporary paleontologists, who share their experiences and offer recommendations to aspiring fossil hunters, they provide perspectives on what work still needs to be done in order to ensure that women's contributions to the field are encouraged and celebrated. Uncovering and relating lost stories about the pivotal contributions of women in vertebrate paleontology doesn't just make for enthralling storytelling, but also helps ensure a richer and more diverse future for this vibrant field. Illuminating the discoveries, collections, and studies of fossil vertebrates conducted by women in vertebrate paleontology, Rebels, Scholars, Explorers will be on every paleontologist's most-wanted list and should find a broader audience in the burgeoning sector of readers from all backgrounds eager to learn about women in the sciences.

An entertaining history of mathematics as chronicled through fifty short biographies. Mathematics today is the fruit of centuries of brilliant insights by men and women whose personalities and life experiences were often as extraordinary as their mathematical achievements. This entertaining history of mathematics chronicles those achievements through fifty short biographies that bring these great thinkers to life while making their contributions understandable to readers with little math background. Among the fascinating characters profiled are Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the founder of classical physics and infinitesimal calculus--he frequently quarreled with fellow scientists and was obsessed by alchemy and arcane Bible interpretation; Sophie Germain (1776 - 1831), who studied secretly at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, using the name of a previously enrolled male student--she is remembered for her work on Fermat's Last Theorem and on elasticity theory; Emmy Noether (1882 - 1935), whom Albert Einstein described as the most important woman in the history of mathematics--she made important contributions to abstract algebra and in physics she clarified the connection between conservation laws and symmetry; and Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), who came from humble origins in India and had almost no formal training, yet made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. The unusual behavior and life circumstances of these and many other intriguing personalities make for fascinating reading and a highly enjoyable introduction to mathematics.

Going Somewhere is a dynamic autobiographical narrative about Andrew Marino's career in science. With a depth and drama that arise from personal involvement, the book explores an exceptionally wide range of science-related matters: the relation between electrical energy and life; the influence of corporate and military power on science; the role of self-interest on the part of federal and state agencies that deal with human health, especially the NIH and the FDA; the importance of cross-examining scientific experts in legal hearings; the erroneous view of nature that results when the perspective of physics is extended into biology; the pivotal role of deterministic chaos theory in at least some cognitive processes. These matters arise in the long course of the author's scientific and legal activities involving the complex debate over the health risks of man-made environmental electromagnetic fields. The book offers far more than a solution to the contentious health issue. The story provides a portal into how science actually works, which you will see differs dramatically from the romantic notion of an objective search for truth. You will understand that science is a human enterprise, all too human, inescapably enmeshed in uncertainty. This realization has the potential to change your life because it will likely affect whom you choose to believe, and with what degree of confidence.

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.

'Based on meticulous research in original sources ... Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was ... Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated' Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting - centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks - transformed the earth. Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds - it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe's industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion. Joseph Banks was the dynamo for this momentous change. As botanist for James Cook's great voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavour, Banks collected plants on a vast scale, armed with the vision - as a child of the Enlightenment - that to travel physically was to advance intellectually. His thinking was as intrepid as Cook's seafaring: he commissioned radically influential and physically daring expeditions such as those of Francis Masson to the Cape Colony, George Staunton to China, George Caley to Australia, William Bligh to Tahiti and Jamaica, among many others. Jordan Goodman's epic history follows these high seas adventurers and their influence in Europe, as well as taking us back to the early years of Kew Gardens, which Banks developed devotedly across the course of his life, transforming it into one of the world's largest and most diverse botanical gardens. In a rip-roaring global expedition, based on original sources in many languages, Goodman gives a momentous history of how the discoveries made by Banks and his collectors advanced scientific understanding around the world.

At last, one of the most popular books on the American West is available once again in hardcover. In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of "Desert Solitaire, " the University of Arizona Press is pleased to publish a new edition featuring a new introduction by the author, his definitive corrections to the text, and new illustrations commissioned exclusively for this volume. Edward Abbey's account of two summers spent in southeastern Utah's canyonlands is surely one of the most enduring works of contemporary American nature writing. In it he tells of his stint as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, of his love for the natural beauty that surrounded him, and of his distaste for the modernizing improvements designed to increase visitation to the park. "I confess to being a nature lover," admits Abbey more than thirty years after his sojourn in the wilderness. "But I did not mean to be mistaken for a nature writer. I never wanted to be anything but a writer, period." First published in 1968 to "a few brief but not hostile notices," "Desert Solitaire" quietly sold out of its first printing but eventually developed a loyal enough following in paperback to earn Abbey the "nature writer" label he claims never to have wanted. "Desert Solitaire" lives on because it is a work that reflects profound love of nature and a bitter abhorrence of all that would desecrate it. "Abbey is one of our very best writers about wilderness country," observed Wallace Stegner in the "Los Angeles Times Book Review"; "he is also a gadfly with a stinger like a scorpion." "This book may well seem like a ride on a bucking bronco," added Edwin Way Teale in the "New York Times." "It is rough, tough, combative...passionately felt, deeply poetic." But perhaps the spirit of the man, the work, and the circumstances of its writing were best summarized by Larry McMurtry in his review for the "Washington Post" "Edward Abbey is the Thoreau of the American West."

This book, for a broad readership, examines the young Einstein from a variety of perspectives - personal, scientific, historical, and philosophical.

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.

Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multi-million-pound industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humour, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization and beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a videogame should be "a series of interesting decisions", Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his ten rules of good game design.

"People like myself, who truly feel at home in several countries, are not strictly at home anywhere," writes Abraham Pais, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, near the beginning of this engrossing chronicle of his life on two continents. The author of an immensely popular biography of Einstein, "Subtle Is the Lord," Pais writes engagingly for a general audience. His "tale" describes his period of hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland (he ended the war in a Gestapo prison) and his life in America, particularly at the newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then directed by the brilliant and controversial physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Pais tells fascinating stories about Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr, Sakharov, Dirac, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, as well as about nonscientists like Chaim Weizmann, George Kennan, Erwin Panofsky, and Pablo Casals. His enthusiasm about science and life in general pervades a book that is partly a memoir, partly a travel commentary, and partly a history of science.

Pais's charming recollections of his years as a university student become somber with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. He was presented with an unusual deadline for his graduate work: a German decree that July 14, 1941, would be the final date on which Dutch Jews could be granted a doctoral degree. Pais received the degree, only to be forced into hiding from the Nazis in 1943, practically next door to Anne Frank. After the war, he went to the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. 1946 began his years at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he worked first as a Fellow and then as a Professor until his move to Rockefeller University in 1963. Combining his understanding of disparate social and political worlds, Pais comments just as insightfully on Oppenheimer's ordeals during the McCarthy era as he does on his own and his European colleagues' struggles during World War II.

Originally published in 1997.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

300 years ago, in April 1721, a smallpox epidemic was raging in England. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew that she could save her 3-year-old daughter using the process of inoculation. She had witnessed this at first hand in Turkey, while she was living there as the wife of the British ambassador. She also knew that by inoculating - making her daughter the first person protected in the West - she would face opposition from doctors, politicians and clerics. Her courageous action eventually led to the eradication of smallpox and the prevention of millions of deaths. But Mary was more than a scientific campaigner. She mixed with the greatest politicians, writers, artists and thinkers of her day. She was also an important early feminist, writing powerfully and provocatively about the position of women. She was best friends with the poet Alexander Pope. They collaborated on a series of poems, which made her into a household name, an 'It Girl'. But their friendship turned sour and he used his pen to vilify her publicly. Aristocratic by birth, Mary chose to elope with Edward Wortley Montagu, whom she knew she did not love, so as to avoid being forced into marrying someone else. In middle age, her marriage stale, she fell for someone young enough to be her son - and, unknown to her, bisexual. She set off on a new life with him abroad. When this relationship failed, she stayed on in Europe, narrowly escaping the coercive control of an Italian conman. After twenty-two years abroad, she returned home to London to die. The son-in-law she had dismissed as a young man had meanwhile become Prime Minister.

A lyrical and honest portrait of illness and the way it changes life and faith, from the award-winning author of "Things Seen and Unseen."
In the winter of 2009, Nora Gallagher was told she had an inflamed optic nerve, cause unknown, that if untreated would leave her blind. With this news, and the search for a diagnosis and treatment, her once busy and fast-moving life tunneled into a quieter country she calls Oz: unfamiliar, slower, deeply rooted in uncertainty and vulnerability. "Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic," written as Gallagher was still recovering, is a moving meditation on serious illness, what helped her through and what didn't, why a wall exists between the sick and the healthy, and what can take it down partway. It is also a testament of modern faith--accepting of both science and intellect--and a hard-won revelation of what lies at the heart of ordinary suffering.

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from the acclaimed "New York Times" bestselling author of "Cutting for Stone"

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David's past emerges once again--and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.

A gripping narrative of the love and betrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer, told through the lives of three unique women.

Set against a dramatic backdrop of war, spies, and nuclear bombs, "An Atomic Love Story "unveils a vivid new view of a tumultuous era and one of its most important figures. In the early decades of the 20th century, three highly ambitious women found their way to the West Coast, where each was destined to collide with the young Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist whose work in creating the atomic bomb would forever impact modern history. His first and most intense love was for Jean Tatlock, though he married the tempestuous Kitty Harrison--both were members of the Communist Party--and was rumored to have had a scandalous affair with the brilliant Ruth Sherman Tolman, ten years his senior and the wife of another celebrated physicist. Although each were connected through their relationship to Oppenheimer, their experiences reflect important changes in the lives of American women in the 20th century: the conflict between career and marriage; the need for a woman to define herself independently; experimentation with sexuality; and the growth of career opportunities.

Beautifully written and superbly researched through a rich collection of firsthand accounts, this intimate portrait shares the tragedies, betrayals, and romances of an alluring man and three bold women, revealing how they pushed to the very forefront of social and cultural changes in a fascinating, volatile era.

From Al Gore to Jane Goodall, Jane Fonda to Ingrid Newkirk, Eco Legends Alphabet presents an inspirational A to Z of those who have stood proudly and defiantly beside Mother Earth. Lovingly illustrated and informatively written, Eco Legends Alphabet is the perfect title for any lover of nature, or anyone joining the movement that will define our era.

In Kidney to Share, Martha Gershun tells the story of her decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. She takes readers through the complex process by which such donors are vetted to ensure that they are physically and psychologically fit to take the risk of a major operation. John D. Lantos, a physician and bioethicist, places Gershun's story in the larger context of the history of kidney transplantation and the ethical controversies that surround living donors. Together, they help readers understand the discoveries that made transplantation relatively safe and effective as well as the legal, ethical, and economic policies that make it feasible. Gershun and Lantos explore the steps involved in recovering and allocating organs. They analyze the differences that arise depending on whether the organ comes from a living donor or one who has died. They observe the expertise-and the shortcomings-of doctors, nurses, and other professionals and describe the burdens that we place on people who are willing to donate. In this raw and vivid book, Gershun and Lantos ask us to consider just how far society should go in using one person's healthy body parts in order to save another person. Kidney to Share provides an account of organ donation that is both personal and analytical. The combination of perspectives leads to a profound and compelling exploration of a largely opaque practice. Gershun and Lantos pull back the curtain to offer readers a more transparent view of the fascinating world of organ donation.

In 1870, Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) travelled to Gibraltar to observe the solar eclipse. He kept a diary and produced beautiful accounts of the expedition - alongside altogether more specific observations, including the 656 steps down a local cliff face, and every item in his luggage. It is with the same meticulous approach and cheerful prose that he records, in letters, journal articles and reports, the successes and failures of the vast range of projects in which he was involved. Although initially trained as a chemist, Crookes worked across the spectrum of the sciences, from consulting on preventative measures against cattle plague through to investigating spiritualism. Opening with a foreword by the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, this biography by Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe (1868-1933), first published in 1923, explores a remarkable life of enquiry through a host of first-hand sources.

Simone Weil: philosopher, political activist, mystic - and sister to André, one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. These two extraordinary siblings formed an obsession for Karen Olsson, who studied mathematics at Harvard, only to turn to writing as a vocation.

When Olsson got hold of the 1940 letters between the siblings, she found they shared a curiosity about the inception of creative thought - that flash of insight - that Olsson experienced as both a maths student, and later, novelist.

Following this thread of connections, The Weil Conjectures explores the lives of Simone and André, the lore and allure of mathematics, and its significance in Olsson's own life.

"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.

As a civil engineer, Sir John Fowler (1817-98) devoted his life to the railways. His best-known achievements include the first railway bridge across the Thames in London, Manchester Central Station, the development of the London Underground and (with Sir Benjamin Baker) the Forth Bridge - arguably the most remarkable feat of engineering of the nineteenth century. Given access to friends and family papers, the author and social theorist Thomas Mackay (1849-1912) portrays a man who was fascinated by engineering as a child, and who continued to work up until his death. As a portrait of one of the architects of Victorian Britain, this biography, first published in 1900, will be of great interest to historians of the period as well as readers wishing to know more about the development of iconic infrastructure.

The extraordinary true story of the first Girl Scout troop designated for homeless girls - from the homeless families it brought together in Queens, New York, to the amazing citywide and countrywide responses it sparked. Giselle Burgess, a young mother of five, and her children, along with others in the shelter, become the catalyst for Troop 6000. Having worked for the Girl Scouts earlier on, Giselle knew that these girls, including her own daughters, needed something they could be a part of, where they didn't need to feel the shame or stigma of being homeless, but could instead develop skills and build a community that they could be proud of. New York Times journalist Nikita Stewart embedded with Troop 6000 for more than a year, at the peak of New York City's homelessness crisis in 2017, spending time with the girls and their families and witnessing both their triumphs and challenges. Stewart takes the reader with her as she paints intimate portraits of Giselle's family and the others whom she met along the way. Readers will feel an instant connection and express joy when a family finally moves out of the shelter and into a permanent home, as well as the pain of the day-to-day life of homelessness. And they will cheer when the girls sell their very first cookies. Ultimately, Troop 6000 puts a different face on homelessness. Stewart shows how shared experiences of poverty and hardship sparked the political will needed to create the troop that would expand from one shelter to fifteen in New York City and ultimately to other cities around the country. Also woven throughout the book is a history of the Girl Scouts, and how the organization has changed and adapted to fit the times, meeting the needs of girls from all walks of life. Troop 6000 is the ultimate story of how when we come together, we can improve our circumstances, find support and commonality, and experience joy, no matter how challenging life may be.