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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc by Peter Foster is the biography
of scientist and mountaineer Thomas Graham Brown, whose
encyclopaedic knowledge of the mountain earned him the soubriquet,
and whose achievements in the Alps and Greater Ranges place him at
the forefront of British mountaineering between the two world wars.
Born in Edinburgh in 1882, Graham Brown first pursued a career in
the sciences as a physiologist - his exacting father demanding the
highest standards - and the results of his research, largely
unrecognised at the time, now underpin current understanding of the
nervous control of movement in animals and man. His mountaineering
career began in earnest after the First World War. From rock
climbing in the Lake District he progressed to guided climbs in the
Alps, where in 1927 he was fatefully introduced to Frank Smythe
with whom he made the groundbreaking first ascents of the
Sentinelle Rouge and the Route Major on the Brenva Face of Mont
Blanc. This resulted in an obsession with the mountain and a feud
between the pair that smouldered and flared for twenty years.
Ambitious, determined and uncompromising in his views, he never
left others feeling neutral: Geoffrey Winthrop Young thought him `a
vicious lunatic', yet Charles Houston felt closer to Graham Brown
`than almost anyone else I know'. Graham Brown's life was one of
turbulence in his career, relationships and in the mountains,
whether on expeditions to Mount Foraker, Nanda Devi and Masherbrum,
or most frequently, the Alps. Peter Foster has drawn upon diaries,
letters and extensive archival research that illuminate the highs
and lows of Graham Brown's scientific and climbing careers, and
explores the imbalance between the significance of his achievements
and the lack of recognition he received. But, above all, The
Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc allows one to hear Graham Brown's
voice: querulous, opinionated and, to the discomfort of his many
adversaries, almost always right.
This monograph presents a groundbreaking scholarly treatment of the
German mathematician Jost Burgi's original work on logarithms,
Arithmetische und Geometrische Progress Tabulen. It provides the
first-ever English translation of Burgi's text and illuminates his
role in the development of the conception of logarithms, for which
John Napier is traditionally given priority. High-resolution scans
of each page of the his handwritten text are reproduced for the
reader and as a means of preserving an important work for which
there are very few surviving copies. The book begins with a brief
biography of Burgi to familiarize readers with his life and work,
as well as to offer an historical context in which to explore his
contributions. The second chapter then describes the extant copies
of the Arithmetische und Geometrische Progress Tabulen, with a
detailed description of the copy that is the focus of this book,
the 1620 "Graz manuscript". A complete facsimile of the text is
included in the next chapter, along with a corresponding
transcription and an English translation; a transcription of a
second version of the manuscript (the "Gdansk manuscript") is
included alongside that of the Graz edition so that readers can
easily and closely examine the differences between the two. The
final chapter considers two important questions about Burgi's work,
such as who was the copyist of the Graz manuscript and what the
relationship is between the Graz and Gdansk versions. Appendices
are also included that contain a timeline of Burgi's life, the
underlying concept of Napier's construction of logarithms, and
scans of all 58 sheets of the tables from Burgi's text. Anyone with
an appreciation for the history of mathematics will find this book
to be an insightful and interesting look at an important and often
overlooked work. It will also be a valuable resource for
undergraduates taking courses in the history of mathematics,
researchers of the history of mathematics, and professors of
mathematics education who wish to incorporate historical context
into their teaching.
This famous book, the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1985 hit song
'Cloudbusting', is the extraordinary account of life as friend,
confidant and child of the brilliant but persecuted psychoanalyst
Wilhelm Reich. Peter, his son, shared with his father the
revolutionary concept of a world where dream and reality are
virtually indistinguishable, and the sense of mission which set him
and his followers apart from the rest of the human race. Here,
Peter Reich writes vividly and movingly of the mysterious
experiences he shared with his father: of flying saucers; the
'cloudbuster' rain-makers and the FDA narks; and of the final
tragic realization of his father's death, which woke him up to the
necessity of living out his life in an alien world. Already
regarded as a modern classic, A Book of Dreams is not only a
beautifully written narrative of a remarkable friendship and
collaboration, but a loving son's heartfelt tribute to a loving
father.
Like a third of the UK population, Julia has a chronic pain
condition. According to her doctors, it can't be cured. She doesn't
believe them. She does believe in miracles, though. It's just a
question of tracking one down. Julia's search for a cure takes her
on a global quest, exploring the boundaries between science,
psychology and faith with practitioners on the fringes of
conventional, traditional and alternative medicine. Raising vital
questions about the modern medical system, Heal Me is also a story
about identity in a system skewed against female patients, and the
struggle to retain a sense of self under the medical gaze.
One of the most important psychologists alive today tells the story
of the transformation of modern psychology through the lens of his
own career and change of heart. Martin E. P. Seligman is one of the
most decorated and popular psychologists of his generation. When he
first encountered the discipline in the 1960s, it was devoted to
eliminating misery: the science of how past trauma creates present
symptoms. Today, thanks in large part to Seligman's own work
pioneering the Positive Psychology movement, it is ever more
focused on the bright side; gratitude, resilience, and hope. In
this his memoir, Seligman recounts how he learned to study
optimism; including a life-changing conversation with his
five-year-old daughter. In wise, eloquent prose, Seligman tells the
human stories behind some of his major findings. He recounts
developing CAVE, an analytical tool that predicts election outcomes
(with shocking accuracy) based on the language used in campaign
speeches, and the canonical studies that birthed the theory of
learned helplessness - which he now reveals was incorrect. And he
writes at length for the first time about his own battles with
depression at a young age. All the while, Seligman works out his
theory of psychology, making a compelling and deeply personal case
for the importance of virtues like hope, anticipation, gratitude,
and wisdom for our mental health. You will walk away from this book
not just educated but deeply enriched.
Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose
"many worlds" theory of multiple universes has had a profound
impact on physics and philosophy. Using Everett's unpublished
papers (recently discovered in his son's basement) and dozens of
interviews with his friends, colleagues, and surviving family
members, Byrne paints, for the general reader, a detailed portrait
of the genius who invented an astonishing way of describing our
complex universe from the inside. Everett's mathematical model
(called the "universal wave function") treats all possible events
as "equally real", and concludes that countless copies of every
person and thing exist in all possible configurations spread over
an infinity of universes: many worlds. Afflicted by depression and
addictions, Everett strove to bring rational order to the
professional realms in which he played historically significant
roles. In addition to his famous interpretation of quantum
mechanics, Everett wrote a classic paper in game theory; created
computer algorithms that revolutionized military operations
research; and performed pioneering work in artificial intelligence
for top secret government projects. He wrote the original software
for targeting cities in a nuclear hot war; and he was one of the
first scientists to recognize the danger of nuclear winter. As a
Cold Warrior, he designed logical systems that modeled "rational"
human and machine behaviors, and yet he was largely oblivious to
the emotional damage his irrational personal behavior inflicted
upon his family, lovers, and business partners. He died young, but
left behind a fascinating record of his life, including
correspondence with such philosophically inclined physicists as
Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and John Wheeler. These remarkable
letters illuminate the long and often bitter struggle to explain
the paradox of measurement at the heart of quantum physics. In
recent years, Everett's solution to this mysterious problem - the
existence of a universe of universes - has gained considerable
traction in scientific circles, not as science fiction, but as an
explanation of physical reality.
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