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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
This book is for anyone, young or old, who has ever had a desire or
ambition to achieve the American Dream. It is a story of a man
chasing the American Dream told from an African perspective. It is
a story which illustrates the power of setting goals and working
hard to achieve them. The key is to stay focused. Life is a journey
sometimes fraught with many obstacles, highs and lows. In this book
the reader will find reason to stay focused on their goal,
inspiration to take them over the lows and around the obstacles.
Come with me to the Top of The Mountain. Our journey will take us
from the sun -drenched, arid African reservations(rural areas to
which Africans were relegated) of Southern Rhodesia ( present day
Zimbabwe ) to the academic halls of Albert Einstein College of
medicine in the Bronx, New York. Enjoy the ride.
Charles Babbage was thirty years old in 1821, as was his close
friend, John Herschel, and in English intellectual circles they
were both regarded as brilliant mathematicians. One day as Babbage
worked in preparing logarithmic tables, a tedious and boring task,
he commented to Herschel that he thought he could invent a machine
to do these calculations with far more speed and accuracy than a
human calculator could. And so was born an idea that would
fascinate, tantalize, and absorb him for the remainder of his life.
Over the years he drew plans, expanded them, modified them, and
finally invented two machines, the Difference Engine and the
Analytical Engine. The first was capable only of generating tables,
but the Analytical Engine could do much more. It could convert into
numbers and print the results of any formula that might be
required. It could also develop any analytical formula the laws of
whose formation were given. Using punched cards it could store
early results in a calculation and then use them to make further
calculations when they were required. He had invented the first
mechanical computer.
This book provides a rounded biography of Franz (later Sir Francis)
Simon, his early life in Germany, his move to Oxford in 1933, and
his experimental contributions to low temperature physics
approximating absolute zero. After 1939 he switched his research to
nuclear physics, and is credited with solving the problem of
uranium isotope separation by gaseous diffusion for the British
nuclear programme Tube Alloys. The volume is distinctive for its
inclusion of source materials not available to previous
researchers, such as Simon's diary and his correspondence with his
wife, and for a fresh, well-informed insider voice on the
five-power nuclear rivalry of the war years. The work also draws on
a relatively mature nuclear literature to attempt a comparison and
evaluation of the five nuclear rivals in wider political and
military context, and to identify the factors, or groups of
factors, that can explain the results.
Ships of Mercy tells the riveting true story of Mercy Ships, the
astonishing fleet of hospital ships that sail the globe, bringing
dramatic change to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in
the most impoverished and disease-stricken corners of the world.
Ships of Mercy is a page-turner of the highest quality, an
inspiring testimony both to the essence of the human spirit and
God's amazing providence. It tells the story of a teenager's
extraordinary vision brought to reality in the form of a
multi-million dollar life-saving mission. It also tells the story
of a family of people from diverse backgrounds who have sacrificed
their comfort and security in order to perform remarkable acts of
grace and kindness.
Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements.
Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O. J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind.
Discovering the passions of Chris Woodhead Collected writings from
a man who stimulated controversy and roused passions Best known as
the Chief Inspector of Schools who demanded higher standards across
the board, Woodhead was admired and condemned in equal measure for
his determination to confront taboos and bring them into the
national education debate. His final and greatest challenge was
with Motor Neurone Disease, a condition he faced with strength and
empathy until his death in 2015. While his education journalism
stands at the core of this book, What Matters Most explores
Woodhead's lesser known passions, literature and climbing, which he
writes about with the precision and clarity that became his
journalistic hallmark. In the final pages of the book Woodhead
shares his personal views on assisted dying, advocating for
individuals to be permitted to die with dignity at a time of their
choosing. What Matters Most: A Collection of Pieces is a
fascinating and poignant book which tracks the life and beliefs of
a truly inspirational contemporary thinker.
This biography of the famous Soviet physicist Leonid Isaakovich
Mandelstam (1889-1944), who became a Professor at Moscow State
University in 1925 and an Academician (the highest scientific title
in the USSR) in 1929, describes his contributions to both physics
and technology. It also discusses the scientific community that
formed around him, commonly known as the Mandelstam School. By
doing so, it places Mandelstam's life story in its cultural
context: the context of German University (until 1914), the First
World War, the Civil War, and the development of the Socialist
Revolution (until 1925) and the young socialist country. The book
considers various general issues, such as the impact of German
scientific culture on Russian science; the problems and fates of
Russian intellectuals during the revolutionary and
post-revolutionary years; the formation of the Soviet Academy of
Science, the State Academy; and the transformation of the system of
higher education in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s. Further,
it reconstructs Mandelstam's philosophy of science and his approach
to the social and ethical function of science and science education
based on his fundamental writings and lecture notes. This
reconstruction is enhanced by extensive use of previously
unpublished archive material as well as the transcripts of personal
interviews conducted by the author. The book also discusses the
biographies of Mandelstam's friends and collaborators: German
mathematician and philosopher Richard von Mises, Soviet Communist
Party official and philosopher B.M.Hessen, Russian specialist in
radio engineering N.D.Papalexy, the specialists in non-linear
dynamics A.A.Andronov, S.E. Chaikin, A.A.Vitt and the plasma
physicist M.A.Leontovich. This second, extended edition
reconstructs the social and economic backgrounds of Mandelstam and
his colleagues, describing their positions at the universities and
the institutes belonging to the Academy of Science. Additionally,
Mandelstam's philosophy of science is investigated in connection
with the ideological attacks that occurred after Mandelstam's
death, particularly the great mathematician A.D.Alexandrov's
criticism of Mandelstam's operationalism.
Brown-Sequard: An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine traces
the strange career of an eccentric, restless, widely admired,
nineteenth-century physician-scientist who eventually came to be
scorned by antivivisectionists for his work on animals, by
churchgoers who believed that he encouraged licentious behavior,
and by other scientists for his unorthodox views and for claims
that, in fact, he never made. An improbable genius whose colorful
life was characterized by dramatic reversals of fortune, he was a
founder-physician of England's premier neurological hospital and
held important professorships in America and France.
Brown-Sequard identified the sensory pathways in the spinal cord
and emphasized functional processes in the integrative actions of
the nervous system, thereby anticipating modern concepts of how the
brain operates. He also discovered the function of the nerves that
supply the blood vessels and thereby control their caliber, and the
associated reflexes that adjust the circulation to bodily needs. He
was the first to show that the adrenal glands are essential to life
and suggested that other organs have internal secretions. He
injected himself with ground-up animal testicles, claiming an
invigorating effect, and this approach led to the development of
modern hormone replacement therapy.
Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard was reportedly "one of the greatest
discover of facts that the world has ever seen." It has also been
suggested that "if his reasoning power had equaled his power of
observation he might have done for physiology what Newton did for
physics." In fact, scientific advances in the years since his death
have provided increasing support for many of his once-ridiculed
beliefs."
When Michael Collins decides to become a surgeon, he is totally
unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital.
A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical
school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected
medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared
to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared.
All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic
resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter
who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.
This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise
from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished
Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he
recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's
glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars
that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at
rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a
laughable income.
Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but
cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he
is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end
them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the
boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman
diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful
hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt
to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death
as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal
with the recognition of his own limitations and
imperfections.
Unflinching and deeply engaging, "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" is a
humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is
a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but
always compulsively readable.
In 2017, Dr Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the
challenges faced by women doctors, including her own personal
struggle with "imposter syndrome"-a long-held, secret belief that
she was not clever enough or good enough to be a "real" doctor.
Accessed nearly 300,000 times by readers around the world, Koven's
Letter to a Young Female Physician has evolved into a work that
reflects on her career in medicine, in which women still encounter
sexism, pay inequity and harassment. Koven tells engaging stories
about her pregnancy during a gruelling residency in the AIDS era;
the illnesses of her son and parents during which her roles as a
doctor, mother and daughter converged; and the twilight of her
career during the COVID-19 pandemic. Letter to a Young Female
Physician offers an indelible eyewitness account from a doctor,
mother, wife, daughter, teacher and writer that will encourage
readers to embrace their own imperfect selves.
Combining memoir and studies in the Environmental Humanities, Black
Swan Song weaves together an autobiographically-based account of
the unique life and work of Rod Giblett. For over 25 years he was a
leading local wetland conservationist, environmental activist, and
pioneer transdisciplinary researcher and writer of fiction and
non-fiction. He has researched, written, and published more than 25
books in the environmental humanities, especially wetland cultural
studies, and psychoanalytic ecology. Black Swan Song traces Rod's
early and later life and work from being born in Borneo as the
child of Christian missionaries, through his childhood in Bible
College, being a High School dropout and studying at three
universities to becoming an academic, activist and author, and now
a writer. Following in the footsteps of New Lives of the Saints:
Twelve Environmental Apostles, Black Swan Song also comprises
conversations in conservation counter-theology between the twelve
minor biblical prophets and twelve environmental apostles, such as
Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Rachel Carson. It
also introduces the lives and works of twelve more environmental
apostles, such as John Clare, Rebecca Solnit, John Charles Ryan,
and others who have made a valuable contribution to green thinking
and living. Black Swan Song mixes modes and genres, such as memoir,
essay, story, criticism, etc., making up the writer's black swan
song. It provides ways of living and being with the earth in dark
and troubled times by providing resources of a journey of hope for
learning to live bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in
bioregional home habitats of the living earth and in the
Symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene.
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