Biography & Autobiography : Science & Technology

Academic scientist turned Hollywood screen writer, Mlodinow recounts his first year on the faculty at California Technical Institute, beginning in winter 1981, and his interactions there with renowned physicist Richard Feynman during his last years. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (book more...

Price: $9.99

“We’re born in blood. Our family histories are contained in it, our bodies nourished by it daily. Five quarts run through each of us, along some sixty thousand miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries.” –from Five Quarts In the national bestseller Sleep Demons, Bill Hayes took us on a trailblazing trip through the night country of insomnia. more...

Price: $14.95

Fred Hoyle was a down-to-earth, argumentative Yorkshireman who became the voice of British astronomy. For fifty years, he spoke out for astronomy in the newspapers, on government committees, at scientific meetings, in popular books and on the radio. He devised the steady-state theory of the universe and worked out how the elements are formed in the nuclei of stars. He also founded a prestigious institute, led the project to build a giant telescope and, if it rained on his summer. holiday, he sat in his caravan and wrote science fiction novels for his legions of fans around the world. This book tells the behind-the-scenes story of one of the twentieth century's most distinguished and controversial scientists. - ;Fred Hoyle was one of the most widely acclaimed and colourful scientists of the twentieth century, a down-to-earth Yorkshireman who combined a brilliant scientific mind with a relish for communication and controversy. Best known for his steady-state theory of cosmology, he described a universe with both an infinite past and an infinite future. He coined the phrase 'big bang' to describe the main competing theory, and sustained a long-running, sometimes ill-tempered, and typically public debate with his scientific rivals. He showed how the elements are formed by nuclear reactions inside stars, and explained how we are therefore all formed from stardust. He also claimed that diseases fall from the sky,. attacked Darwinism, and branded the famous fossil of the feathered Archaeopteryx a fake. Throughout his career, Hoyle played a major role in the popularization of science. Through his radio broadcasts and his highly successful science fiction novels he became a household name, though his outspokenness and support for increasingly outlandish causes later in life at times antagonized the scientific community. Jane Gregory builds up a vivid picture of Hoyle's role in the ideas, the organization, and the popularization of astronomy in post-war Britai more...

Price: $48.00

This book is the official biography of George J. Klein, a design engineer who spent 40 years at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and was considered "the most productive inventor in Canada in the 20th Century". The book recounts Klein’s family history and personal life. more...

Price: $49.95

Clocks became common in late medieval Europe and the measurement of time began to rule everyday life. God's Clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford and the Invention of Time  is a biography of England's greatest medieval scientist, a man who solved major practical and theoretical problems to build an extraordinary and pioneering astronomical and astrological clock. Richard of Wallingford (1292-1336), the son of a blacksmith, was a brilliant mathematician with a genius for the practical solution of technical problems. Trained at Oxford, he became a monk and then abbot of the great abbey of St Albans, where he built his clock. Although as abbot he held great power, he was also a tragic figure, becoming a leper. His achievement, nevertheless, is a striking example of the sophistication of medieval science, based on knowledge handed down from the Greeks via the Arabs. more...

Price: $180.00