Biography & Autobiography : Science & Technology

How did a young man who grew up in Hungary between the two World Wars go from cleaning rubble and moving pianos at the end of World War II in the Budapest Opera House to winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry? George Olah takes us on a remarkable journey from Budapest to Cleveland to Los Angeles - with a stopover in Stockholm, of course. An innovative scientist, George Olah is truly one of a kind, whose amazing research into extremely strong acids and their new chemistry yielded what is now commonly known as superacidic 'magic acid chemistry.' more...

Price: $69.95

The book presents the life and personality, the scientific and philosophical work of Ludwig Boltzmann. His tragic life ending with his suicide is described in detail. A substantial part of the book is devoted to discussing his work establishing the atomic structure of matter and his influence on modern physics. - ;This book presents the life and personality, the scientific and philosophical work of Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the great scientists who marked the passage from 19th- to 20th-Century physics. His rich and tragic life, ending by suicide at the age of 62, is described in detail. A substantial part of the book is devoted to discussing his scientific and philosophical ideas and placing them in the context of the second half of the 19th century. The fact that Boltzmann was the man who did. most to establish that there is a microscopic, atomic structure underlying macroscopic bodies is documented, as is Boltzmann's influence on modern physics, especially through the work of Planck on light quanta and of Einstein on Brownian motion. Boltzmann was the centre of a scientific upheaval, and he has been proved right on many crucial issues. He anticipated Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and proposed a theory of knowledge based on Darwin. His basic results, when properly understood, can also be stated as mathematical theorems. Some of these have been proved: others are still at the level of likely but unproven conjectures. The main text of this biography is written almost entirely without equations. Mathematical. appendices deepen knowledge of some technical aspects of the subject. - more...

Price: $55.00

This is the first biography in twenty years of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists of our time and yet a man relatively unknown to the wider public. Approaching science with a freshness unbound by convention or previous expectations, he produced some of the most original scientific thinking of the nineteenth century and his discoveries went on to shape the twentieth century. more...

Price: $34.95

FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps. Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim. Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions. more...

Price: $18.99

Simon Forman (1552-1611) is one of London's most infamous astrologers. Whilst he was consulted thousands of times a year for medical and other questions he stood apart from the medical elite as he boldly asserted medical ideas that were at odds with most learned physicians. In this fascinating book, Lauren Kassell vividly recovers the world of medicine and magic in Elizabethan London. - ;Simon Forman (1552-1611) is one of London's most infamous astrologers. He stood apart from the medical elite because he was not formally educated and because he represented, and boldly asserted, medical ideas that were antithetical to those held by most learned physicians. He survived the plague, was consulted thousands of times a year for medical and other questions, distilled strong waters made from beer, herbs, and sometimes chemical ingredients, pursued the philosopher's stone. in experiments and ancient texts, and when he was fortunate spoke with angels. He wrote compulsively, documenting his life and protesting his expertise in thousands of pages of notes and treatises. This highly readable book provides the first full account of Forman's papers, makes sense of his. notorious reputation, and vividly recovers the world of medicine and magic in Elizabethan London. - ;Kassell has succeeded in transcending Forman's eccentricities and reconstructing an image of the astrologer-physician of Lambeth worthy of consideration alongside renowned contemporaries like John Dee and William Lilly - Celeste Chamberland, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft;The second, and best, book on Simon Forman to appear recently...its great strength is that it takes us through all the different aspects of Forman's work...and the mind of an uneducated but remarkable thinker - John Henry, EHR;Kassell's close study of Forman's writings, sensitivity to context, and wide familiarity with his sources and contemporaries has paid dividends with a rich sense of Forman's person and activi more...

Price: $45.00