This Open Access biography chronicles the life and achievements of the Norwegian engineer and physicist Rolf Wideroe. Readers who meet him in the pages of this book will wonder why he isn't better known. The first of Wideroe's many pioneering contributions in the field of accelerator physics was the betatron, the second, the linear accelerator, both summarized in a 27 page PhD. The betatron revolutionized the fields of cancer treatment through radiation therapy and also nondestructive testing; hospitals worldwide installed Wideroe's machine and today's modern radiation treatment equipment is based on his inventions. The most recent renaissance of the linac provides unprecedented x-ray intensities at Free Electron Laser (FEL) facilities in operation and construction worldwide. . Wideroe's story also includes a fair share of drama, particularly during World War II when both Germans and the Allies vied for his collaboration. Wideroe held leading positions in multinational industry groups and was one of the consultants for building the world's largest nuclear laboratory, CERN, in Switzerland. He gained over 200 patents, received several honorary doctorates and a number of international awards. The author, a professional writer and maker of TV documentaries, has gained access to hitherto restricted archives in several countries, which provided a wealth of new material and insights, in particular in relation to the war years. She tells here a gripping and illuminating story.

John Wilson did more than anyone else to prevent and cure blindness, and help blind people, throughout the world between the 1940s and his death in 1999. In addition, he made a significant contribution to the cause of disabled people in general. His achievements deserve comparison with those of other charismatic figures such as Helen Keller and Albert Schweitzer. A man of action and unflagging energy, with exceptional determination, imagination and compassion, and analytical and organizational ability, he changed millions of people's lives for the better by developing systems and techniques for preventing and curing blindness, and by spurring on the process by which blind people have come to be able to play a full, active and creative role in society. His story is a moving one. Blinded himself in a school experiment in 1931 at the age of twelve, he went on to read law at Oxford. After joining the National Institute for the Blind as an administrator, he took part in 1946-7 in an epic government-sponsored tour of the African and Middle Eastern territories in what was then the British Empire that lasted nine months, studying the intractable problems of blindness there.It led to the formation of what was to become the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, now known as Sight Savers International. In the wake of his sustained campaigns for the cure and prevention of blindness, above all in Africa and the Indian sub-continent, underpinned by the indomitable support of his wife Jean, John Wilson became a leading activist and mentor for blind and disabled people both at the UN and world-wide; and he was to found further important institutions such as the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and Impact, which focusses on the universal challenge of avoidable disability. He was an enthusiastic globe-trotter, a powerful orator, a much-loved member of his family and a highly respected friend and colleague of large numbers of people with whom he worked across the continents. This inspiring tale of how one remarkable man travelled the world and transformed countless lives will have a strong appeal to the general public. It will also be of direct interest to people involved in charities and other institutions, particularly those concerned with blindness and disability.Meticulously researched, it is primarily based on John Wilson's Braille diaries and his other papers, the records at Sight Savers and interviews in many different countries with people who knew him.The first daisy book for all, containing these CD-ROM text versions: Large print, daisy audio and full text, screen reader and braille

This book outlines the scientific career of Arto Salomaa, a pioneer in theoretical computer science and mathematics. The author first interviewed the subject and his family and collaborators, and he then researched this fascinating biography of an intellectual who was key in the development of these fields. Early chapters progress chronologically from Academician Salomaa's origins, childhood, and education to his professional successes in science, teaching, and publishing. His most impactful direct research efforts have been in the areas of automata and formal languages. Beyond that he has influenced many more scientists and professionals through collaborations, teaching, and books on topics such as biocomputing and cryptography. The author offers insights into Finnish history, culture, and academia, while historians of computer science will appreciate the vignettes describing some of the people who have shaped the field from the 1950s to today. The author and his subject return throughout to underlying themes such as the importance of family and the value of longstanding collegial relationships, while the work and achievements are leavened with humor and references to interests such as music, sport, and the sauna.

An unforgettable story of discovery and unimaginable destruction and a major biography of one of America's most brilliant--and most divisive--scientists, "Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center" vividly illuminates the man who would go down in history as "the father of the atomic bomb." Oppenheimer's talent and drive secured him a place in the pantheon of great physicists and carried him to the laboratories where the secrets of the universe revealed themselves. But they also led him to contribute to the development of the deadliest weapon on earth, a discovery he soon came to fear. His attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race--coupled with political leanings at odds with post-war America--led many to question his loyalties, and brought down upon him the full force of McCarthyite anti-communism. Digging deeply into Oppenheimer's past to solve the enigma of his motivations and his complex personality, Ray Monk uncovers the extraordinary, charming, tortured man--and the remarkable mind--who fundamentally reshaped the world.

This is a revealing account of the family life and achievements of the Third Earl of Rosse, a hereditary peer and resident landlord at Birr Castle, County Offaly, in nineteenth-century Ireland, before, during and after the devastating famine of the 1840s. He was a remarkable engineer, who built enormous telescopes in the cloudy middle of Ireland. The book gives details, in an attractive non-technical style which requires no previous scientific knowledge, of his engineering initiatives and the astronomical results, but also reveals much more about the man and his contributions - locally in the town and county around Birr, in political and other functions in an Ireland administered by the Protestant Ascendancy, in the development and activities of the Royal Society, of which he was President from 1848-54, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Countess of Rosse, who receives full acknowledgement in the book, was a woman of many talents, among which was her pioneering work in photography, and the book includes reproductions of her artistic exposures, and many other attractive illustrations. -- .

In the bestselling tradition of Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Helen MacDonald's H Is for Hawk, Karen Auvinen, an award-winning poet, ventures into the wilderness to seek answers to life's big questions with "candor [and] admirable courage" (Christian Science Monitor). Determined to live an independent life on her own terms, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions-except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck, and a few singed artifacts-Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community. In the evocative spirit of works by Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, and Terry Tempest Williams, Karen's "beautiful, contemplative...breathtaking [debut] memoir honors the wildness of the Rockies" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). "Rough Beauty offers a glimpse into a life that's pared down to its essentials, open to unexpected, even profound, change" (Brevity Magazine), and Karen's pursuit of solace and salvation through shedding trivial ties and living in close harmony with nature, along with her account of finding community and even love, is sure to resonate with all of us who long for meaning and deeper connection. An "outstanding...beautiful story of resilience" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Rough Beauty is a luminous, lyric exploration, "a narrative that reads like a captivating novel...a voice not found often enough in literature-a woman who eschews the prescribed role outlined for her by her family and discovers her own path" (Christian Science Monitor) to embrace the unpredictability and grace of living intimately with the forces of nature.

This book is the first thorough and overdue biography of one of the giants of science in the twentieth century, Jan Hendrik Oort. His fundamental contributions had a lasting effect on the development of our insight and a profound influence on the international organization and cooperation in his area of science and on the efforts and contribution of his native country. This book aims at describing Oort's life and works in the context of the development of his branch of science and as a tribute to a great scientist in a broader sense. The astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort from the Netherlands was founder of studies of the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way Galaxy, initiator of radioastronomy and the European Southern Observatory, and an important contributor to many areas of astronomy, from the study of comets to the universe on the largest scales.

August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight, or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, dust-choked, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. Eighteen years old, he's been down the pits on and off for more than a decade, and now it looks like a life sentence. No unusual story, although Charles is a clever lad - gifted at maths and languages - and for a time he hoped for a different life. Many hoped. Charles Hutton, astonishingly, would actually live the life he dreamed of. Twenty years later you'd have found him in Slaughter's coffee house in London, eating a few oysters with the President of the Royal Society. By the time he died, in 1823, he was a fellow of scientific academies in four countries, while the Lord Chancellor of England counted himself fortunate to have known him. Hard work, talent, and no small share of luck would take Charles Hutton out of the pit to international fame, wealth, admiration and happiness. The pit-boy turned professor would become one of the most revered British scientists of his day. This book is his incredible story.

A fast-paced, gripping insider account of the entrepreneurs and renegades racing to bring lab-grown meat to the world. The trillion-dollar meat industry is one of our greatest environmental hazards; it pollutes more than all the world's fossil-fuel-powered cars. Global animal agriculture is responsible for deforestation, soil erosion and more emissions than air travel, paper mills and coal mining combined. It also depends on the slaughter of more than 60 billion animals per year, a number that is only increasing as the global appetite for meat swells. The whole world seems to be sleepwalking into a food crisis. But a band of doctors, scientists, activists and entrepreneurs have been racing to end animal agriculture as we know it, hoping to fulfill a dream of creating meat without ever having to kill an animal. This is the story of a group of seven vegans quietly working to solve one the most pressing issues we face today, creating the biggest upheaval to the food business in decades along the way. In Billion Dollar Burger, Chase Purdy explores the companies at the cutting edge of the nascent food technology sector, from polarizing activist-turned-tech CEO Josh Tetrick to lobbyists and regulators on both sides of the issue. Billion Dollar Burger follows the people fighting to upend our food system as they butt up against the entrenched interests fighting viciously to stop them. It will take readers on a truly global journey from Silicon Valley to China, by way of Israel and the UK. The stakes are monumentally high: cell-cultured meat is the best hope for sustainable food production, a key to fighting climate change, a gold mine for the companies that make it happen and an existential threat for the farmers and meatpackers that make our meat today.

'A book of marvels, marvellously written' RICHARD DAWKINS A pioneering marine biologist takes us down into the deep ocean to understand bioluminescence, the language of light that helps life communicate in the darkness, and what it tells us about the future of life on Earth. Edith Widder grew up determined to become a marine biologist. But after complications from a surgery during college caused her to go temporarily blind, she became fascinated by light as well as the power of optimism. Her focus turned to oceanic bioluminescence, a scientific frontier, and with little promise of funding or employment she took a leap into the dark. Below the Edge of Darkness explores the depths of the planet's oceans as Widder seeks to understand one of the most important and widely used forms of communication in nature. In the process, she reveals hidden worlds and a dazzling menagerie of behaviours and animals, many never-before-seen or, like the legendary Giant Squid, never-before-filmed in its deep-sea lair. Alongside Widder, we experience life-and-death equipment malfunctions and witness breakthroughs in technology and understanding, all of it set against a growing awareness of the deteriorating health of our largest and least understood ecosystem. This is an adventure story as well as a science story. But it's also about the sometimes complicated business of exploration. And ultimately, Widder shows us that exploration, and the corresponding senses of discovery and wonder, are the keys to the ocean's salvation and thus our future on this planet. 'Edie's story is one of hardscrabble optimism, two-fisted exploration and groundbreaking research. As I've said many times, I'd have wrapped my submersible, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, in bacon if it would have lured the elusive giant squid from the depths. In Below the Edge of Darkness, Edie tells you how she did it' JAMES CAMERON

In spring 1876 a physician named James Madison DeWolf accepted the assignment of contract surgeon for the Seventh Cavalry, becoming one of three surgeons who accompanied Custer's battalion at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Killed in the early stages of the battle, he might easily have become a mere footnote in the many chronicles of this epic campaign - but he left behind an eyewitness account in his diary and correspondence. A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn is the first annotated edition of these rare accounts since 1958, and the most complete treatment to date. While researchers have known of DeWolf's diary for many years, few details have surfaced about the man himself. In A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn, Todd E. Harburn bridges this gap, providing a detailed biography of DeWolf as well as extensive editorial insight into his writings. As one of the most highly educated men who traveled with Custer, the surgeon was well equipped to compose articulate descriptions of the 1876 campaign against the Indians, a fateful journey that began for him at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, and ended on the battlefield in eastern Montana Territory. In letters to his beloved wife, Fannie, and in diary entries - reproduced in this volume exactly as he wrote them - DeWolf describes the terrain, weather conditions, and medical needs that he and his companions encountered along the way. After DeWolf's death, his colleague Dr. Henry Porter, who survived the conflict, retrieved his diary and sent it to DeWolf's widow. Later, the DeWolf family donated it to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Now available in this accessible and fully annotated format, the diary, along with the DeWolf's personal correspondence, serves as a unique primary resource for information about the Little Big Horn campaign and medical practices on the western frontier.

Join Air Force veteran Dr. W. Lee Warren as he chronicles his fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening experience as a neurosurgeon in an Iraq War combat hospital. Warren's life as a neurosurgeon in a trauma center began to unravel long before he shipped off to serve the U.S. Air Force in Iraq in 2004. When he traded a comfortable, if demanding, practice in San Antonio, Texas, for a ride on a C-130 into the combat zone, he was already reeling from months of personal struggle. At the 332nd Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Warren realized his experience with trauma was just beginning. In his 120 days in a tent hospital, he was trained in a different specialty--surviving over a hundred mortar attacks and trying desperately to repair the damages of a war that raged around every detail of every day. No place was safe, and the constant barrage wore down every possible defense, physical or psychological. One day, clad only in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and running shoes, Warren was caught in the open while round after round of mortars shook the earth and shattered the air with their explosions, stripping him of everything he had been trying so desperately to hold on to. In No Place to Hide, Warren tells his story in a brand-new light, sharing how you can: Discover who you are under pressure Lean on faith in your darkest days Find the strength to carry on, no matter what you're facing Whether you are in the midst of your own struggles with faith, relationships, finances, or illness, No Place to Hide will teach you that how you respond in moments of crisis can determine your chances of survival. Praise for No Place to Hide: "No Place to Hide captures simply, eloquently, and passionately what it means to be a physician in time of war. Over ten years of war, we safely air evacuated more than ninety thousand injured and ill from Iraq and Afghanistan--five thousand were the sickest of the sick. This very personal story captures the essence of what it takes to be a military physician and the challenge for our nation to reintegrate all who deploy to war." --Lt. Gen. (ret.) C. Bruce Green, MD, 20th AF Surgeon General "Through Warren's eyes we observe not only the delicate mechanics of brain surgery but also its lifelong effects on real people and their families, both when the surgery succeeds and when it fails. Thank you, Lee Warren, for letting us see the world through your own unique vantage point. Thank you for the lives you saved, for the compassion you showed, for the faith you rediscovered, for reminding us of the precious gift of life." --Philip Yancey, bestselling author of The Jesus I Never Knew

The life and influential career of neurologist Robert J. Joynt, MD, PhD., who in 1996 became the first chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester. In this stirring collection of essays, author Nancy Bolger leads the reader through the extraordinary life of Robert J. Joynt, MD, PhD, one of the most influential neurologists of the last half century. The story begins on the small-town streets of Iowa and takes us through military service and medical school, down the wedding aisle, and ultimately to a long and successful career at the University of Rochester, where Dr. Joynt became the first chair of thenewly created Department of Neurology in 1966. Along the way, we accompany Dr. Joynt on his travels to India, Canada, Ireland, London and Cambridge in England, and many other places, including a much-loved lakeside retreat in Minnesota where the family vacationed year after year. These pages tell of not only Dr. Joynt's life but also of those who inspired him, and how he in turn became a remarkable inspiration to others. Nancy W. Bolger is a writer and editor for the University of Rochester Medical Center. In 1992 she received the Robert G. Fenley Award of Distinction for Medical Science Writing from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

This enthralling biography tells the complete story of one of Tudor England's most enigmatic figures. A Welshman born in Tenby, south Wales, c.1512, Robert Recorde was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge. This book, a detailed biography of this Tudor scholar, reviews the many facets of his astonishingly wide-ranging career and ultimately tragic life. It presents a richly detailed and fully rounded picture of Recorde the man, the university academic and theologian, the physician, the mathematician and astronomer, the antiquarian, and the writer of hugely successful textbooks. Crown appointments brought Recorde into conflict with the scheming Earl of Pembroke, and eventually set him at odds with Queen Mary I. As an intellectual out of his depth in political intrigue, beset by religious turmoil, Recorde eventually succumbed to the dangers that closed inexorably around him.

This book examines the myriad identities and portrayals of Edith Cavell, as they have been constructed and handed down by propagandists, biographers and artists. Cavell was first introduced to the British public through a series of Foreign Office statements which claimed to establish the "facts" of her case. Her own voice, along with those of her family, colleagues and friends, were muted, as a monolithic image of a national heroine and martyr emerged. The book identifies two main areas of tension in her commemoration: firstly, the contrast between complexity of her own behaviour and motivations and the simplicity of the "Cavell Legend" that was constructed around her; and, secondly, the mismatch between the attempts of individuals and professional organisations to commemorate her life and work, and the public construction of a "heroine" who could be of value to the nation state.

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.