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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
By addressing the enigma of the exceptional success of Hungarian
emigrant scientists and telling their life stories, Brilliance in
Exile combines scholarly analysis with fascinating portrayals of
uncommon personalities. Istvan and Balazs Hargittai discuss the
conditions that led to five different waves of emigration of
scientists from the early twentieth century to the present.
Although these exodes were driven by a broad variety of personal
motivations, the attraction of an open society with inclusiveness,
tolerance, and - needless to say - better circumstances for working
and living, was the chief force drawing them abroad. While
emigration from East to West is a general phenomenon, this book
explains why and how the emigration of Hungarian scientists is
distinctive. The high number of Nobel Prizes among this group is
only one indicator. Multicultural tolerance, a quickly emerging,
considerably Jewish, urban middle class, and a very effective
secondary school system were positive legacies of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Multiple generations, shaped by these
conditions, suffered from the increasingly exclusionist,
intolerant, antisemitic, and economically stagnating environment,
and chose to go elsewhere. "I would rather have roots than wings,
but if I cannot have roots, I shall use wings," explained Leo
Szilard, one of the fathers of the Atom Bomb.
Written between 1940 and the late 1970s, the postwar recollections
of renowned physicist Freeman Dyson have been celebrated as an
historic portrait of modern science and its greatest players,
including Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and
Hans Bethe. Chronicling the stories of those who were engaged in
solving some of the most challenging quandaries of
twentieth-century physics, Dyson lends acute insight and profound
observations to a life's work spent chasing what Einstein called
those "deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself."
Whether reflecting on the drama of World War II, the moral dilemmas
of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, or the
demands of raising six children, Dyson's annotated letters reveal
the voice of one "more creative than almost anyone else of his
generation" (Kip Thorne). An illuminating work in these trying
times, Maker of Patterns is an eyewitness account of the scientific
discoveries that define our modern age.
James Watt (1736-1819) transformed the steam engine - the most
significant invention of the Industrial Revolution. Without Watt
there would have been no locomotives, steamships or factories where
machines were energised by coal. Watt was, however, much more - a
scientist who also developed the concept of horsepower, made the
first commercial copying machine and gave his name to a unit of
power - the Watt.
Here is the intensely personal and often humorous autobiography of
one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of his
generation, Sir Rudolf Peierls. Born in Germany in 1907, Peierls
was indeed a bird of passage," whose career of fifty-five years
took him to leading centers of physics--including Munich, Leipzig,
Zurich, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford, and J. Robert
Oppenheimer's Los Alamos. Peierls was a major participant in the
revolutionary development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and
1930s, working with some of the pioneers and, as he puts it, "some
of the great characters" in this field. Originally published in
1985. 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 editions preserve the original texts of these important books
while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover 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.
Through his development of quantitative experimental methods, the
chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) implemented a principle that
many regard as the cornerstone of modern science: in every
operation there is an equal quantity of material before and after
the operation. The origin of Lavoisier's methods, however, has
remained a missing piece in this remarkable episode of scientific
history, perhaps because the talented young scientist himself was
not prepared for the journey his discoveries would set before him.
In this book, Frederic Holmes suggests that Lavoisier gradually
came to understand the nature and power of his quantitative method
during the year 1773, when he began to carry out a research program
on the fixation and release of airs. Drawing upon Lavoisier's
surviving laboratory notebooks, Holmes presents an engaging
portrait of a scientist still seeking the way that would lead him
to become the leader of one of the great upheavals in the history
of science. Holmes follows Lavoisier day-by-day at work in his
laboratory over a course of several months. The scientist's
resourcefulness and imagination spring to life in this account, as
does his propensity to make mistakes, which taught him as much as
his successes. During the course of this odyssey, Lavoisier saw his
early theory of combustion collapse under the weight of his own
efforts to provide experimental evidence to support it. In
compensation, he acquired a method and the hard-won experience on
which he would later construct a more enduring theoretical
structure. 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 editions preserve the
original texts of these important books while presenting them in
durable paperback and hardcover 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.
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