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On the Cucumber Tree (Paperback)
Loot Price: R572
Discovery Miles 5 720
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On the Cucumber Tree (Paperback)
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Loot Price R572
Discovery Miles 5 720
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Science and technology are the most potent influences driving the
modern world. Most science is done in laboratories but, apart from
a generalized image of an anonymous building populated by
white-coated figures, few people outside the sciences have any idea
how such places come into existence or how they work. This memoir
approaches both issues from the author's personal experience. Peter
Day's career took him to many countries and laboratories, including
the Royal Institution in London, arguably the oldest continuously
operating laboratory in the world - and, of course, much else
besides. He looks at a selection of these places through the eyes
of an 'incomer', trying to understand how they came into being and
what makes them tick. He was the first member of his family to go
to university and introductory chapters sketch his early life in a
small Kentish village and tortuous route into science, along with
vignettes of Oxford 50 years ago, a long-lost world. Laboratories,
like most other human constructs, are brought into being through
the ambition and hubris of individuals, kept going by intellect and
sharp elbows, and sometimes brought low by blind egoism. This book
shares examples of all these traits of humanity, observed, if not
by an outsider then certainly by an incomer. Peter Day is an
internationally recognised materials chemist who has received
numerous honorary Fellowships, degrees and Academy memberships.
From a small village in Kent, his career took him to Oxford and
industrial research laboratories in the USA, followed by
Directorship of a European institute in France and the Royal
Institution in London. As well as many technical papers he has
published books and articles about the practise of science, people
who carry it out and organisations where it is done.
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