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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
From his childhood in Waco, Texas, where he took expert care of
nine small cousins while the adults ate Sunday lunch, to Princeton
and an offer from Broadway, to medical and psychoanalytic training,
to the exquisite observations into newborn behavior that led babies
to be seen in an entirely new light, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton's life
has been one of innovation and caring. Known internationally for
the Touchpoints theory of regression and growth in infants and
young children, Brazelton is also credited for bringing the
insights of child development into pediatrics, and for his powerful
advocacy in Congress.
Writing a memoir was not only an interesting experience for this Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University, but it also provided him an opportunity to revisit his past with his sons. The author graduated from Cornell in 1953 in Engineering Physics and received his PhD in Physics in 1956 at the University of Illinois. He was then at the General Electric Research Laboratory until 1965, when he moved to Stanford. He has seen his life transform from a physics student to husband, father, author, professor, scoutmaster, von Humboldt scholar, and sometimes musician. His published books include Pseudopotentials, Solid State Theory, Elementary Electronic Structure, and Applied Quantum Mechanics. Here he draws a parallel with the ancient alchemical goal of transforming lead into gold. The reader will find this engaging memoir rich in anecdotes and stories that constitute the various transformations resulting in what may be called a 'golden experience'.
Writing a memoir was not only an interesting experience for this Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University, but it also provided him an opportunity to revisit his past with his sons. The author graduated from Cornell in 1953 in Engineering Physics and received his PhD in Physics in 1956 at the University of Illinois. He was then at the General Electric Research Laboratory until 1965, when he moved to Stanford. He has seen his life transform from a physics student to husband, father, author, professor, scoutmaster, von Humboldt scholar, and sometimes musician. His published books include Pseudopotentials, Solid State Theory, Elementary Electronic Structure, and Applied Quantum Mechanics. Here he draws a parallel with the ancient alchemical goal of transforming lead into gold. The reader will find this engaging memoir rich in anecdotes and stories that constitute the various transformations resulting in what may be called a 'golden experience'.
A New York Times Notable Book A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business, and politics "Max Chafkin's The Contrarian is much more than a consistently shocking biography of Peter Thiel, the most important investor in tech and a key supporter of the Donald Trump presidency. It's also a disturbing history of Silicon Valley that will make you reconsider the ideological foundations of America's relentless engine of creative destruction."-Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious. In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016. Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy.
First published in 1932. The widespread influence of Gregor Johann Mendel's work and his own remarkable destiny combine to arouse interest in the personality and the life of this investigator who, little known in his lifetime, was one of the pioneers of science. This comprehensive biography of the life and work of Mendel will be of great interest to historians and scientists.
First published in 1963. Humphry Davy, knighted by the Prince Regent in 1812 for his contributions to science, and later created baronet for his invention of the miners' safety lamp, was among the foremost European chemists in the early nineteenth century. Anne Treneer tells in full the story of Humphry Davy's life. From letters, journals and memoirs of the time, Davy and his contemporaries come to life. This title will be of great interest to scientists and historians.
This book, first available in 1994, was published to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Heinrich Hertz's death at the terribly young age of thirty-six. The introductory biography together with eleven papers by Hertz and seven about him are intended to highlight the importance of Hertz's contributions to physics and at the same time to serve the needs of anyone interested in doing research on this highly gifted scientist.
First published in 1978. This biography aims solve the problem of the lack of access to information regarding American engineers and technologists of the nineteenth-century, whilst also providing opportunities for scholars to study and assess the work of hitherto little known, potentially important figures. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of science and history.
First published in 1965. In 1865, a woman first obtained a legal qualification in this country as physician and surgeon. Elizabeth Garrett surprised public opinion by the calm obstinacy with which she fought for her own medical education and that of the young women who followed her. This full biography is based largely on unpublished material from the hospitals and medical schools where Elizabeth Garrett Anderson worked, and the private papers of the Garrett and Anderson families. This title will be of great interest to history of science students.
Sir Isaac Newton once declared that his momentous discoveries were only made thanks to having 'stood on the shoulders of giants'. The same might also be said of the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick. Their discovery of the structure of DNA was, without doubt, one of the biggest scientific landmarks in history and, thanks largely to the success of Watson's best-selling memoir 'The Double Helix', there might seem to be little new to say about this story. But much remains to be said about the particular 'giants' on whose shoulders Watson and Crick stood. Of these, the crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose famous X-ray diffraction photograph known as 'Photo 51' provided Watson and Crick with a vital clue, is now well recognised. Far less well known is the physicist William T. Astbury who, working at Leeds in the 1930s on the structure of wool for the local textile industry, pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography to study biological fibres. In so doing, he not only made the very first studies of the structure of DNA culminating in a photo almost identical to Franklin's 'Photo 51', but also founded the new science of 'molecular biology'. Yet whilst Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize, Astbury has largely been forgotten. The Man in the Monkeynut Coat tells the story of this neglected pioneer, showing not only how it was thanks to him that Watson and Crick were not left empty-handed, but also how his ideas transformed biology leaving a legacy which is still felt today.
This biography of Charles Darwin, first published in 1937, re-lives Darwin's life year by year, allowing the reader to share his experiences. The book displays Darwin's ideas and how they developed and grew over time. This title will be of great interest to students of the history of science and philosophy.
The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann. Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. A child prodigy, he mastered calculus by the age of eight, and in high school made lasting contributions to mathematics. In Germany, where he helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics, and later at Princeton, von Neumann's colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet-bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and the design of the atom bomb; he helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory; he created the first ever programmable digital computer; he prophesized the potential of nanotechnology; and, from his deathbed, he expounded on the limits of brains and computers-and how they might be overcome. Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through a stunningly diverse array of fields, sparking revolutions wherever he went. The Man from the Future is an insightful and thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.
Going Somewhere is a dynamic autobiographical narrative about Andrew Marino's career in science. With a depth and drama that arise from personal involvement, the book explores an exceptionally wide range of science-related matters: the relation between electrical energy and life; the influence of corporate and military power on science; the role of self-interest on the part of federal and state agencies that deal with human health, especially the NIH and the FDA; the importance of cross-examining scientific experts in legal hearings; the erroneous view of nature that results when the perspective of physics is extended into biology; the pivotal role of deterministic chaos theory in at least some cognitive processes. These matters arise in the long course of the author's scientific and legal activities involving the complex debate over the health risks of man-made environmental electromagnetic fields. The book offers far more than a solution to the contentious health issue. The story provides a portal into how science actually works, which you will see differs dramatically from the romantic notion of an objective search for truth. You will understand that science is a human enterprise, all too human, inescapably enmeshed in uncertainty. This realization has the potential to change your life because it will likely affect whom you choose to believe, and with what degree of confidence.
A woman's fight to reclaim her body after a paralysis-inducing cycling accident In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed. In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain, disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay liberation. Deeply unsentimental, Crosby communicates in unflinching prose the experience of "diving into the wreck" of her body to acknowledge grief, and loss, but also to recognize the beauty, fragility, and dependencies of all human bodies. A memoir that is a meditation on disability, metaphor, gender, sex, and love, A Body, Undone is a compelling account of living on, as Crosby rebuilds her body and fashions a life through writing, memory, and desire.
A multi-award-winning Italian debut, from a bold and original new voice in contemporary queer literature. Jonathan is 31 years old, living in Milan with his boyfriend of three years and their two Devon Rex cats when, on a day like any other, he gets a fever. But unlike most, this fever doesn't go away; it's constant, low-level, and exhausting. After spending weeks Googling his symptoms and documenting his illness, he finally sees a doctor. A series of blood tests, anxious visits to hospitals, and repeated misdiagnoses ensue, until the truth is finally revealed: Jonathan is HIV-positive. As Jonathan comes to terms with what this diagnosis will mean for him, his future, and his relationships, he also takes the reader back in time, in search of his history, to the suburbs where he grew up, and from which he feels he has escaped: Rozzano, the ghetto of Milan, and of Italy's north. In the vein of Edouard Louis and Virginie Despentes, Fever is at once a deeply personal story and a searing examination of class, poverty, prejudice, and opportunity in modern Europe.
Tu Youyou's Journey in the Search for Artemisinin is an autobiographical science book chronicling in detail the great experiences of Tu Youyou from her childhood to winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.As Tu Youyou is the first female scientist from China to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, this win created a sudden wave of interest in medicine, resulting in numerous autobiographical books about Tu Youyou appearing on the market. Contrary to these mass market titles, this book is uniquely different as it is fully authorized by the Nobel laureate herself. Her once-confidential experimental data and Artemisinin research reports are now revealed in this book for all to learn and comprehend. In addition, one of the book authors, Dr Wang Manyuan, is the only PhD student supervised by Professor Tu.Pharmaceutical researchers can use the book's valuable contents to reference, quote and analyse while searching for their own scientific inspirations. It also successfully serves as a guide for budding scientists and future Nobel Prize winners as it provides the proper guidance and methods of scientific research.
Tu Youyou's Journey in the Search for Artemisinin is an autobiographical science book chronicling in detail the great experiences of Tu Youyou from her childhood to winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.As Tu Youyou is the first female scientist from China to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, this win created a sudden wave of interest in medicine, resulting in numerous autobiographical books about Tu Youyou appearing on the market. Contrary to these mass market titles, this book is uniquely different as it is fully authorized by the Nobel laureate herself. Her once-confidential experimental data and Artemisinin research reports are now revealed in this book for all to learn and comprehend. In addition, one of the book authors, Dr Wang Manyuan, is the only PhD student supervised by Professor Tu.Pharmaceutical researchers can use the book's valuable contents to reference, quote and analyse while searching for their own scientific inspirations. It also successfully serves as a guide for budding scientists and future Nobel Prize winners as it provides the proper guidance and methods of scientific research.
'Freeman Dyson has had an extraordinary range of interests, serious activity and influence. This is reflected in the choice of topics in these essays ... This book is informative, very entertaining and well up to the high standards attained previously by this author!'Contemporary PhysicsMy friendship with Freeman Dyson goes back over a half century. My first contact with him goes back to the late 1950s, when I was at the Institute for Advanced Study, and then evolved when I was a consultant at General Atomics in La Jolla, California. Freeman was then trying to design a space ship - the Orion - which would be propelled by atomic bombs. When I left the Institute, Freeman and I continued our correspondence and I saved his letters. They are written in an almost calligraphically elegant handwriting. It is hard to see how you could make a mistake in a mathematical computation if you wrote that clearly. The letters show his human side and his enormous range of knowledge.There are then two essays involving the physicist Fritz Houtermans who was an extraordinarily colorful character. There is a brief essay on Einstein's collaboration with a fraud. There is even an essay on the Titius-Bode law and the new exo-planets. Because of my enduring interest in nuclear weapons, the reader will find essays devoted to that. There is also a bit of fiction at the end.
First published in 2005, this book represents the first full length biography of John Phillips, one of the most remarkable and important scientists of the Victorian period. Adopting a broad chronological approach, this book not only traces the development of Phillips' career but clarifies and highlights his role within Victorian culture, shedding light on many wider themes. It explores how Phillips' love of science was inseparable from his need to earn a living and develop a career which could sustain him. Hence questions of power, authority, reputation and patronage were central to Phillips' career and scientific work. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and a rich body of recent writings on Victorian science, this biography brings together his personal story with the scientific theories and developments of the day, and fixes them firmly within the context of wider society.
In the United States it is estimated that 3.2 million people are infected with the Hepatitis C virus, which is a contagious liver disease that can range in severity from a mild illness to a serious, lifelong condition. Infections worldwide are estimated at 150 to 200 million people, many of whom are not aware they are affected. Gregory David finds out the hard way that he is one of the infected - through a letter, which reads, "We regret that at this time our company cannot offer you a life insurance policy. We based our decision on your recent alcohol use during the past six years, and the presence of the Hepatitis C virus." At first, Gregory is in disbelief, and he insists on having his doctor perform an independent test. But when the results come back, he learns that his earlier years of occasional drug use and constant partying may have finally caught up with him. The coming weeks and months pose huge obstacles as Gregory learns about the disease, breaks the news to family and friends, and struggles to cope with an infection he at first knows little about. Join Gregory as he confronts the disease, and find inspiration in "Breaking Free from Hepatitis C."
A lively account of how Darwin’s work on natural selection transformed science and society, and an investigation into the mysterious illness that plagued its author. By early morning of June 30, 1860, a large crowd began to congregate in front of Oxford University’s brand-new Museum of Natural History. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the subject of discussion was Charles Darwin’s new treatise: fact or fiction? Darwin, a simultaneously reclusive and intellectually audacious squire from Kent, claimed to have solved “that mystery of mysteries,” introducing a logical explanation of the origin of species―how they adapted, even transmogrified, through natural selection. At stake, on that summer’s day of spirited debate, was the very foundation of modern biology, not to mention the future of the church. Without fear of exaggeration, Darwin’s thesis would forever change our understanding of the life sciences and the natural world. And yet the author himself was nowhere to be found in the debate hall―instead, he was miles away, seeking respite from a spate of illnesses that had plagued him for much of his adult life. In Origin Story, medical historian Howard Markel recounts the two-year period (1858 to 1860) of Darwin’s writing of On the Origin of Species through its spectacular success and controversy. Simultaneously, Markel delves into the mysterious health symptoms Darwin developed, combing the literature to emerge with a cogent diagnosis of a case that has long fascinated medical historians. The result is a colorful portrait of the man, his friends and enemies, and his seminal work, which resonates to this day.
"No doctor, however great his capacity or original his ideas, has the right to choose martyrs for science or for the general good." Human Guinea Pigs: Experimentation on Man.Whistle-blowers tend not to be very popular. Maurice Pappworth's whistle was in the form of Human Guinea Pigs, the controversial book published in 1967 which examined unethical medical experimentation on humans and identified the researchers and institutions responsible. The ground-breaking text took the medical establishment by storm and provoked questions in Parliament. Brilliant, Jewish, already an outsider, Pappworth was recognised as the best medical teacher in the country. But convinced that the reason for these experiments being carried out was purely to advance the careers of ambitious practitioners, Pappworth had to speak up. In the wake of his expose, stricter codes of practice for human experimentation were put into place and the establishment of the research ethics committees was formed, which remains in place today. Maurice Pappworth's daughter, the late Joanna Seldon, re-assesses the importance of Human Guinea Pigs in her book Whistle-blower: The Life of Maurice Pappworth. She considers her father's text a major milestone in the development of current medical research ethics and demands a re-evaluation of the pioneering medical ethicist who compromised his own career in order to ensure the protection of the patient.
Opening with his award of Membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the book relates John's personal and family history from his English and Belgian parents and grandparents and their roles in two World Wars. His Belgian grandparents were evacuated to England in the first war: his father was shot at by the Germans during the liberation of Antwerp and his mother bombed in a pub in South London while serving in the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service in the second. Managing to get into veterinary college from a large comprehensive school in South London, John recounts tales from his studies and goes on to discuss various major debates which occurred during his career, including vaccinations and the anti-vaccine lobby. The role of badgers and TB is also discussed. The tale of his experience of meeting children with the drug-induced injury of thalidomide is both life-affirming and tear-jerking. His time in East Africa, including his experiences in Uganda under Idi Amin's dictatorship, is chilling but still funny and up-lifting. The tales of his experiences in general and specialist veterinary practice, with memorable farm, horse, dog and cat cases are enlightening, educational and sometimes sad but often very hilarious. The horrific experiences with foot-and-mouth disease will get any animal lover in tears and questioning what happened and why? But the option of a Vegan Utopia in a world without farm animals is dismissed as a sad alternative as demonstrated when large swathes of the United Kingdom were left without stock after the outbreak. |
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