Galileo's Instruments of Credit
Mario Biagioli (Auteur)
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One of the most important mathematical theorems is named after Pythagoras of Samos, but this semi-mythical Greek sage has more to offer than formulas. He is said to have discovered the numerical nature of the basic consonances and transposed the musical proportions to the cosmos, postulating a "harmony of the spheres." He may have coined the words "cosmos" and "philosophy." He is also believed to have taught the doctrine of transmigration of souls and therefore to have advised a vegetarian diet. Ancient legends have Pythagoras conversing with dogs, bears, and bulls. A distinctly Pythagorean way of life, including detailed ritual regulations, was observed by his disciples, who were organized as a secret society. Later, Pythagorean and Platonic teachings became fused. In this Platonized form, Pythagoreanism has remained influential through medieval Christianity and the Renaissance down to the present. Christoph Riedweg's book is an engaging introduction to the fundamental contributions of Pythagoras to the establishment of European culture. To penetrate the intricate maze of lore and ascertain what history can tell us about the philosopher, Riedweg not only examines the written record but also considers Pythagoras within the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual context of his times. The result is a vivid overview of the life and teachings of a crucial Greek thinker and his most important followers.
Best-selling author Barbara Goldsmith on the myth and reality behind the extraordinary "Madame Curie." The myth of Marie Curie—the penniless Polish immigrant who, through genius and obsessive persistence, endured years of toil and deprivation to produce radium, a luminous panacea for all the world's ills including cancer—has obscured the remarkable truth behind her discoveries. Curie's shrewd though controversial insight was that radioactivity was an atomic property that could be used to discover new elements. While her work won her two Nobel Prizes and transformed our world, it did not liberate her from the prejudices of either the male-dominated scientific community or society. Here is an all-too-human woman trying to balance science, love, and the family values that constitute her legacy. Using original research (diaries, letters, and family interviews) to peel away the layers of myth and reveal the woman behind the icon, the acclaimed author and historian Barbara Goldsmith offers a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing discoveries, and the price she paid for fame. 15 photographs.
Pamela McCorduck first went among the artificial intelligentsia when the field was fresh and new, and asked the scientists engaged in it what they were doing and why. She saw artificial intelligence as the scientific apotheosis of one of the most enduring, glorious, often amusing, and sometimes alarming, traditions of human culture: the endless fascination with artifacts that think. Machines Who Think was translated into many languages, became an international cult classic, and stayed in print for nearly twenty years. Now, Machines Who Think is back, along with an extended Afterword that brings the field up to date in the last quarter century, including its scientific and its public faces. McCorduck shows how, from a slightly dubious fringe science, artificial intelligence has moved slowly (though not always steadily) to a central place in our everyday lives, and how it will be even more crucial as the World Wide Web moves into its next generation.
‘Since Maxwell’s time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.’
Albert Einstein
‘He is easily, to physicists, the most magical figure of the nineteenth century.’
Times Literary Supplement
Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film Apollo 13, Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.) In Failure Is Not an Option, Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids -- still in their twenties, only a few years out of college -- who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success. Finally, Kranz reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now. This is a fascinating firsthand account written by a veteran mission controller of one of America's greatest achievements.
Nikola Tesla has been called the most important man of the twentieth century. Certainly he contributed more to the field of electricity, radio, and television than any other person living or dead. Ultimately he died alone and impoverished having driven all of his friends away through his neurotic and eccentric behavior. Tesla was never able to fit into the world that he found himself in. This autobiography, originally serialized in Electrical Experimenter, is an intensely fascinating glimpse into the mind of a genius, his inventions, and the magical world in which he lived.
EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson
‘Isaacson’s biography is readable and highly professional, based on extensive research and thorough checking by expert physicists and historians. Anyone coming to Einstein’s life and work for the first time will be accurately informed and intellectually stimulated…A memorable conclusion: “For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe.” This is as pithy as Einstein himself’
Andrew Robinson, New Scientist 14/4
‘What captures the public attention will be the biographer’s revelation that Einstein fathered a daughter, Lieserl, before he married his fellow mathematician, Mileva Mari, and that the child mysteriously disappears from the record’
Lisa Jardine, The Times 28/4
‘[A] brilliant biography, rich with newly available archival material’
Literary Review, June issue
‘Beautifully written, it renders the physics understandable… Einstein was one of the creators of the modern world, and anyone that does not possess a biography of him should acquire this one’
Sunday Telegraph 3/6
‘With prodigious effort and businesslike calm, Isaacson has given us much more than Einstein the magus, he has given us Einstein the mensch’
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 3/6
‘Isaacson is excellent at explaining the science…. But moments later the reality of the understanding has slipped away and one’s sense of amazement returns. This is because Einstein is analyzing a world beyond the direct perception of our senses’
Daily Express 8/6
'YOU REALLY MUST READ… Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson: a highly readable, dramatic and revelatory biography'
Sunday Times 10/6
‘This book is popular science, biography, history and dramatic writing at its very best’
5 stars, London Lite 12/6
'A thorough exploration of his subject's life, a skilful piece of scientific literature and a thumping good read...It's one of the greatest stories of modern science and to his credit and my surprise, Isaacson has done a first-rate job in telling it. This is, quite simply, a riveting read'
Robin McKie, Observer 10/6
'This book is a splendid achievement'
Daily Telegraph 23/7
'[Isaacson] has written a great book, one that provides everything one would want from a biography of Einstein'
The Spectator 30/6
'YOU REALLY MUST READ… a highly readable, dramatic and revelatory biography'
Sunday Times 17/6
'A readable, dramatic and revelatory life, based on a mass of new letters'
Sunday Times 1/7
‘The popular Einstein story is impossible to resist. A young man fails his mathematics exams yet becomes the world’s greatest scientist. He works in obscurity. When he publishes his great papers, he’s ignored. Despite all this – and his autism – he triumphs. But he does so only with the help of his wife, a key source of his ideas. It turns out that none of that is true. The reality, however, is even better’
FT 4/8
‘This book reads very much like a labour of love… While Einstein may have changed from scientific revolutionary to reactionary during his career, his life remained fascinating and complex to the end, and this book does him justice’
Independent on Sunday 12/08
'In the end, Einstein left his mark on the world because he always had the courage to stand up to conventional wisdom and was never afraid to ask seemingly naïve questions, most of which began with the words "what if?". This tendency to rebel was the source of his creativity and his real talent was an ability to focus on mundane things that his contemporaries had overlooked. He has always deserved a biography that radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence - and now, thanks to Walter Isaacson, he finally has one'
Sunday Business Post (Ireland) 5/8
‘His sympathetic biography of “science’s pre-eminent poster boy” can justifiably claim to be more comprehensive than any before.
‘Isaacson still manages to explain Einstein’s revolutionary thinking with infectious enthusiasm, but it is the man behind the science who is now brought into sharper focus’
Guardian 25/8
‘Walter Isaacson’s achievement is to take us beyond the myth of the huge brain. Through an artful mix of biography and lucid illumination of the most mind-blowing theoretical leaps in science, he makes the case that Einstein’s genius depended not on ‘brute processing power’, but imagination, independence, creativity and passion’
5 stars, Mail on Sunday 2/9
'It is the portrayal of [Einstein's] weaknesses and foibles that makes this book and Albert himself such a delight. He might have been able to understand quantum theory and imagine the universe as a series of equations that swept through existence like a wave, but people! He was just like the rest of us. His private life as a lover, husband and father shows many faults and mistakes. The book is a glorious attempt to showing a towering genius in human terms' Venue 28/9
'A compelling biography of the little scientist who never wore socks and who changed the way we see the world. Isaacson elegantly and fluently interweaves Einstein's interestingly chaotic personal life with confidently lengthy accounts of the work'
Favourite Biographies of 2007, Sunday Times 25/11
'A wealth of information about a complex and divided character. Einstein said his public acclaim made him feel a fraud, but he was an adept manipulator of his own image; when it was rumoured that he was too absent-minded to remember his socks in the morning, he stopped wearing them so as not to disappoint anyone'
Tim Martin, Biographies of the Year Daily Telegraph 24/11
EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson - 9781847370488
'In the end, Einstein left his mark on the world because he always had the courage to stand up to conventional wisdom and was never afraid to ask seemingly naïve questions, most of which began with the words "what if?". This tendency to rebel was the source of his creativity and his real talent was an ability to focus on mundane things that his contemporaries had overlooked. He has always deserved a biography that radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence - and now, thanks to Walter Isaacson, he finally has one'
Sunday Business Post (Ireland) 5/8
"Albert comes vividly to life and so do his space-warping, mind-bending theories. Isaacson uses personal letters that have only recently become available and it turns out he was as passionate about the female of our species as he was about the rest of the universe"
Alan Alda, Hawkeye and Science buff, The Times 8/11