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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
The Life and Works of Robert Wood (1717-1771) commemorates the
Irish classicist and traveller on the 250th anniversary of his
death and provides the general reader with a study that can be
regarded as a source book for the fascinating life and career of a
much-neglected figure in the realm of Irish eighteenth-century
travels and antiquarianism. The book starts by setting the context
of eighteenth-century travels to the east and then examines the
primary sources emanating from Wood's own eastern voyages, as well
as the relevant literary sources available to him before, during,
and after his travels. It then provides an extensive and
much-needed biographical account of Robert Wood, with particular
reference to his Irish and English patrons, before examining the
main results of the second tour (1750-1751), namely his three
pioneering books: Ruins of Palmyra (1753), Ruins of Balbec (1757),
and The Original Genius of Homer (1775). It ends by considering the
enormous legacy of Robert Wood, in terms of the popularity of his
books; the variety and quality of portraits commissioned by his
friends and associates; his contribution to the study of classical
literature; his influence on architectural drawing in late
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; and the cultural
significance of his work on building design. The text also reflects
on the somewhat questionable nature of his works, in terms of the
fact that his second voyage of the east, and the entire production
of the first two books, were financed by his friend Dawkins, whose
wealth derived from a slave plantation in Jamaica.
From growing up on the banks of the Ohio River during the Great
Depression to acquiring executive management roles at large
international companies, James Hardymon's life has been full of
twists, turns, hard work, and achievement. During his career,
Hardymon helped build corporations as a CEO, learned the ropes of
Wall Street, and interacted with US presidents and congressional
leaders. As a result, he acquired a keen, first-hand understanding
of corporate America, which propelled his reputation as a
well-respected leader. Engineering Corporate Success traces
Hardymon's personal story and career trajectory -- including his
childhood, college years at the University of Kentucky, service in
the US Army, and his time employed in some of the highest-level
executive positions in America. Based on a series of interviews
conducted by Terry L. Birdwhistell for the Louie B. Nunn Center for
Oral History, the book reveals Hardymon's maxims for success,
experiences of rising through the corporate ranks, and key insights
into how business decisions are made in an increasingly
international environment. Hardymon also discusses the importance
of philanthropy, his philosophy of giving back, and his close
relationship with the University of Kentucky. This well-rounded
work provides a forthright description of the rewards and
challenges that come with balancing a prosperous personal and
professional life.
The extraordinary story of the scientific expeditions that ushered
in the era of relativity In 1919, British scientists led
expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's new
theory of general relativity in what became the century's most
celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era
and made Einstein a celebrity by confirming his prediction that the
path of light rays would be bent by gravity. Yet the effort to
"weigh light" during the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse has become
clouded by myth and skepticism. Could Arthur Eddington and Frank
Dyson have gotten the results they claimed? Did the pacifist
Eddington falsify evidence to foster peace after a horrific war by
validating the theory of a German antiwar campaigner? In No Shadow
of a Doubt, Daniel Kennefick provides definitive answers by
offering the most comprehensive and authoritative account of how
expedition scientists overcame war, bad weather, and equipment
problems to make the experiment a triumphant success.
"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.
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. -- .
The firsthand pandemic experiences of rural health-care
providers--who were already burdened when COVID-19 hit--raise
questions about the future of public health and health-care
delivery. This volume comprises the COVID-19 pandemic experiences
of Appalachian health-care workers, including frontline providers,
administrators, and educators. The combined narrative reveals how
governmental and corporate policies exacerbated the region's
injustices, stymied response efforts, and increased the death toll.
Beginning with an overview of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its impact
on the body, the essays in the book's first section provide
background material and contextualize the subsequent explosion of
telemedicine, the pandemic's impact on medical education, and its
relationship to systemic racism and related disparities in mental
health treatment. Next, first-person narratives from diverse
perspectives recount the pandemic's layered stresses, including the
scramble for ventilators, masks, and other personal protective
equipment the neighbors, friends, and family members who flouted
public-health mandates, convinced that COVID-19 was a hoax the
added burden the virus leveled on patients whose health was already
compromised by cancer, diabetes, or addiction the acute ways the
pandemic's arrival exacerbated interpersonal and systemic racism
that Black and other health-care workers of color bear not only the
battle against the virus but also the growing suspicion and even
physical abuse from patients convinced that doctors and nurses were
trying to kill them These visceral, personal experiences of how
Appalachian health-care workers responded to the pandemic amid the
nation's deeply polarized political discourse will shape the
historical record of this "unprecedented time" and provide a
glimpse into the future of rural medicine. Contributors: Lucas
Aidukaitis, Clay Anderson, Tammy Bannister, Alli Delp, Lynn
Elliott, Monika Holbein, Laura Hungerford, Nikki King, Brittany
Landore, Jeffrey J. LeBoeuf, Sojourner Nightingale, Beth O'Connor,
Rakesh Patel, Mildred E. Perreault, Melanie B. Richards, Tara
Smith, Kathy Osborne Still, Darla Timbo, Kathy Hsu Wibberly
A legacy of care. Hailed as one of the world's top-ranked medical
schools, the UBC Faculty of Medicine is globally recognized as a
leader in medical education and health sciences research. In
celebration of its 70th anniversary, this richly illustrated
history is an inspiring reflection on the Faculty's rise from
humble beginnings to its standing today as a beacon of excellence.
This beautifully illustrated book documents the history of the UBC
Faculty of Medicine, from its creation to the present day. Tracing
the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the many people who
strove to first bring the Faculty into existence, and then to
ensure its success, it is a testament to their work in transforming
aspiration into reality. Unlikely though it may seem today, the UBC
Faculty of Medicine's creation was threatened from the moment
British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871. Proposals for a
provincial medical school encountered myriad challenges. There was
no university until 1915, and it took eight decades from the early
dream to enrollment of the first medical students. And yet,
establishing the medical school was only the first of many
milestones reached despite great odds. Today, the Faculty's medical
undergraduate program is the fourth largest in North America. Its
faculty members have garnered numerous illustrious awards-including
the Nobel Prize. Its province-wide, distributed undergraduate and
postgraduate program, established in 2004 as the first of its kind
in Canada, is developing a new generation of doctors, bringing
health education to remote regions and communities, and enhancing
the quality of health care. And its researchers continue to make
breakthroughs in the priority areas of precision health, cancer,
brain and mental health, heart and lung health, population health,
and chronic diseases as well as across the breadth of health and
life sciences.
Andrew T. Still, the founder of osteopathic medicine, reveals how
he matured into a medical pioneer from humble beginnings in the
rural frontier of the United States. Beginning with his upbringing
in rural Missouri, we witness how Still became accustomed to
practicality at a young age. At the time he was a boy in the 1840s,
the area he and his family lived in was barely settled - many basic
public amenities such as hospitals and schools simply did not
exist. Still's father became the local doctor, and would introduce
his son to the medicine. The outbreak of the American Civil War in
the 1860s disrupted the young Still's apprenticeship in medicine
and surgery, although he gained valuable experience treating sick
and wounded soldiers as a hospital steward. During and after the
war, Still was astonished at how ineffectual so many medical
techniques were - this, coupled with researches and a further
course in medicine, spurred him to create the science of
osteopathy.
This study explores the evolution of Lomonosov's imposing stature
in Russian thought from the middle of the eighteenth century to the
closing years of the Soviet period. It reveals much about the
intersection in Russian culture of attitudes towards the meaning
and significance of science, as well as about the rise of a Russian
national identity, of which Lomonosov became an outstanding symbol.
Idealized depictions of Lomonosov were employed by Russian
scientists, historians, and poets, among others, in efforts to
affirm to their countrymen and to the state the pragmatic
advantages of science to a modernizing nation. In setting forth
this assumption, Usitalo notes that no sharply drawn division can
be upheld between the utilization of the myth of Lomonosov during
the Soviet period of Russian history and that which characterized
earlier views. The main elements that formed the mythology were
laid down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Soviet
scholars simply added more exaggerated layers to existing
representations.
When the "Railway Magazine" of January 2000 published the results
of its Millennium Poll, Sir Vincent Raven gained a 42nd place,
along with Thomas Newcomen and Arthur Peppercorn. This is the
biography of this engineer, illustrated with contemporary archive
photographs, portraits and ephemera.
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