The march of science has never proceeded smoothly. It has been
marked through the years by episodes of drama and comedy, of
failure as well as triumph, by outrageous strokes of luck, deserved
and undeserved, and sometimes by human tragedy. It has seen deep
intellectual friendships, as well as ferocious animosities, and
once in a while acts of theft and malice, deceit, and even a hoax
or two. Scientists come in all shapes: the obsessive and the
dilettantish, the genial, the envious, the preternaturally
brilliant and the slow-witted who sometimes see further in the end,
the open-minded and the intolerant, recluses and arrivistes. From
the death of Archimedes at the hands of an irritated Roman soldier
to the concoction of a superconducting witches' brew at the very
close of the twentieth century, the stories in Eurekas and
Euphorias pour out, told with wit and relish by Walter Gratzer.
Open this book at random and you may chance on the clumsy chemist
who breaks a thermometer in a reaction vat and finds mercury to be
the catalyst that starts the modern dyestuff industry; or a famous
physicist dissolving his gold Nobel Prize medal in acid to prevent
it from falling into the hands of the Nazis, recovering it when the
war ends; mathematicians and physicists diverting themselves in
prison cells, and even in a madhouse, by creating startling
advances in their subject. We witness the careers, sometimes
tragic, sometimes carefree, of the great women mathematicians, from
Hypatia of Alexandria to Sophie Germain in France and Sonia
Kovalevskaya in Russia and Sweden, and then Marie Curie's
relentless battle with the French Academy. Here, then, a glorious
parade unfolds to delight the reader, with stories to astonish, to
instruct, and most especially, to entertain.
General
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