Science, with its inherent tension between the known and the
unknown, is an inexhaustible mine of great stories. Collected here
are twenty-six among the most enchanting tales, one for each letter
of the alphabet: the main characters are scientists of the highest
caliber most of whom, however, are unknown to the general public.
This book goes from A to Z. The letter A stands for Abel, the great
Norwegian mathematician, here involved in an elliptic thriller
about a fundamental theorem of mathematics, while the letter Z
refers to Absolute Zero, the ultimate and lowest temperature limit,
- 273,15 degrees Celsius, a value that is tremendously cooler than
the most remote corner of the Universe: the race to reach this
final outpost of coldness is not yet complete, but, similarly to
the history books of polar explorations at the beginning of the
20th century, its pages record successes, failures, fierce
rivalries and tragic desperations. In between the A and the Z, the
other letters of the alphabet are similar to the various stages of
a very fascinating journey along the paths of science, a journey in
the company of a very unique set of characters as eccentric and
peculiar as those in Ulysses by James Joyce: the French astronomer
who lost everything, even his mind, to chase the transits of Venus;
the caustic Austrian scientist who, perfectly at ease with both the
laws of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics, revealed the hidden
secrets of dreams and the periodic table of chemical elements; the
young Indian astrophysicist who was the first to understand how a
star dies, suffering the ferocious opposition of his mentor for
this discovery. Or the Hungarian physicist who struggled with his
melancholy in the shadows of the desert of Los Alamos; or the
French scholar who was forced to hide her femininity behind a false
identity so as to publish fundamental theorems on prime numbers.
And so on and so forth. Twenty-six stories, which reveal the most
authentic atmosphere of science and the lives of some of its main
players: each story can be read in quite a short period of time --
basically the time it takes to get on and off the train between two
metro stations. Largely independent from one another, these
twenty-six stories make the book a harmonious polyphony of several
voices: the reader can invent his/her own very personal order for
the chapters simply by ordering the sequence of letters
differently. For an elementary law of Mathematics, this can give
rise to an astronomically large number of possible books -- all the
same, but - then again - all different. This book is therefore the
ideal companion for an infinite number of real or metaphoric
journeys.
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