Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Marie Curie: A Life (Radcliffe Biography Series)

Marie Curie: A Life (Radcliffe Biography Series)

by Susan Quinn

A brilliant, often surprising portrait--based on new information--that is sure to be the definitive work on one of history's greatest women. Quinn shows in this richly textured work, a well-rounded, in-depth view of Curie as a scientist, a woman, a wife and a lover. 16 pages of photos; notes; index.

Einstein in Love

by Dennis Overbye

While the world hailed Einstein's genius, his private life was collapsing around him. His marriage to the beautiful, tormented Mileva had failed and he had launched into affairs with a string of comely young women. But at its height, Einstein's and Mileva's marriage had been an extraordinary one - a colleague and often fierce adversary, Mileva had been brilliantly matched with the scientific genius, pillow talking... (more)

Genius

The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick

From the author of the national bestseller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science" (The New York Times). 16 pages of photos.

Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior (Vintage)

Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior (Vintage)

by Jonathan Weiner

"A fascinating history--. Literate and authoritative--.Marvelously exciting." -- The New York Times Book Review Jonathan Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Beak of the Finch , brings his brilliant reporting skills to the story of Seymour Benzer, the Brooklyn-born maverick scientist whose study of genetics and experiments with fruit fly genes has helped revolutionize or knowledge of the connections... (more)

The Making of a Psychiatrist

by David S. Viscott

Newton: The Making of Genius

by Patricia Fara

Newton was not a physicist, and he devoted most of his energy to deciphering the mysteries of alchemy, theology, and ancient chronology. How then did he become world-famous as the architect of modern cosmology? Fara demonstrates that Newton's reputation was carefully cultivated by devoted followers until, in the eighteenth century, it became inseparable from the rising reputation of the new discipline of science... (more)

My Life with Stephen

by Jane Hawking

Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and remarkable scientists of our age and author of the scientific bestseller A Brief History of Time, which sold more than 25 million. In this compelling memoir, his first wife, Jane Hawking, relates the inside story of their extraordinary marriage. As Stephen’s academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of motor neurone disease. Jane’s... (more)

Scientific elite: Nobel laureates in the United States

Scientific elite: Nobel laureates in the United States

by Harriet Zuckerman

Savage: The Life And Times Of Jemmy Button

Savage: The Life And Times Of Jemmy Button

by Nick Hazlewood

A tale of tragedy, catastrophe, and the triumph of the human spirit. In 1830 a Yamana indian boy, Orundellico, was bought from his uncle in Tierra del Fuego for the price of a mother-of-pearl button.Renamed Jemmy Button, he was removed from his primitive nomadic existence, where life revolved around a hunt for food and the need for shelter; and taken halfway round the world to an England at the height of the... (more)

Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists

Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists

by Balazs Hargittai

Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists contains 36 interviews with well-known scientists, including 19 Nobel laureates, Wolf Prize winners, and other luminaries. These in-depth conversations provide a glimpse into the greatest achievements in science during the past few decades, featuring stories of the discoveries, and showing the human drama behind them. The greatest scientists are brought into... (more)

Bird of Passage: Recollections of a PhysicistRudolf Peierls

Bird of Passage: Recollections of a Physicist

by Rudolf Ernst Peierls

The lighthearted title is a clue to the easy-going style of Peierls's memoir of a career spent working (and sometimes playing) with his peersthe scientists whose ideas and experiments generated the awesome body of laws and theories known as quantum physics. Born in Germany in 1907, Peierls lived to win a British knighthoodbut never, it seems, once he had escaped Hitler's Germany with his Russian-born wife, settled... (more)

Uncle Tungsten

by Oliver Sacks

From Oliver Sacks, distinguished neurologist and master storyteller, comes a magical account of childhood, told with the charm and power of his celebrated case histories. Not only is it a beautifully written account of an English childhood - seasoned by a childish passion for science - but it is told from the intimate and revelatory perspective of one of the most important and humane writers on psychology alive... (more)

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (Helix Books)

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (Helix Books)

by Richard P. Feynman

Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman’s contributions to twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the world around him—how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful book—based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he gave at the University of Washington in 1963—shows us this other side of Feynman, as he... (more)

Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science

Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science

by Amir D. Aczel

He was neither a mathematician nor a trained physicist and yet Léon Foucault always knew that a mysterious force of nature was among us. Like Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, and others before him, Foucault sensed a dramatic relationship between the rotating skies above and the seemingly motionless ground beneath our feet. But it wasn't until 1851 -- in Paris, inside the Panthéon, and in the company of fellow amateur... (more)

The Joy of Insight: Passions of a PhysicistVictor Weisskopf

The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist

by Victor Frederick Weisskopf

This autobiography looks at the life and times of Victor Weisskopf, a scientist at the forefront of particle physics research who became one of the early advocates of nuclear responsibility. This book chronicles his life, set against the backdrop of one of history's most fertile periods of scientific endeavour. Coming of age as a physicist in pre-war Europe, Victor Weisskopf worked with such scientific greats as... (more)

Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist (Vintage)

Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist (Vintage)

by John Brockman

What makes a child decide to become a scientist? •For Robert Sapolsky–Stanford professor of biology–it was an argument with a rabbi over a passage in the Bible. •Physicist Lee Smolin traces his inspiration to a volume of Einstein’s work, picked up as a diversion from heartbreak. •Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist and the author of Flow , found his calling through Descartes. Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas... (more)

Who Got Einstein's Office?: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study

Who Got Einstein's Office?: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study

by Regis

This is the fascinating history of the Institute for Advanced Study, which was home to fourteen Nobel laureates and most of the century's greatest mathematicians and physicists, including Einstein, Kurt Godel, and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller Benjamin Franklin, this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how the imagination that distinguished his science sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story, a testament to the connection between... (more)

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London

by Lisa Jardine

The brilliant, largely forgotten maverick Robert Hooke was an engineer, surveyor, architect, and inventor who worked tirelessly with his intimate friend Christopher Wren to rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.He was the first Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society, and his engravings of natural phenomena seen under the new microscope appeared in his masterpiece, the acclaimed Micrographia, one of the... (more)

The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth's Antiquity

The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth's Antiquity

by Jack Repcheck

There are three men whose life’s work helped free science from the strait-jacket of religion. Two of the three—Nicolaus Copernicus and Charles Darwin—are widely heralded for their breakthroughs. The third, James Hutton, is comparatively unknown, yet he profoundly changed our understanding of the earth, its age, and its dynamic forces. A Scottish gentleman farmer, Hutton’s observations on his small tract of land... (more)

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