Product Description

A wonderfully readable account of scientific development over the past five hundred years, focusing on the lives and achievements of individual scientists, by the bestselling author of In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat

In this ambitious new book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction.

By focusing on the scientists themselves, Gribbin has written an anecdotal narrative enlivened with stories of personal drama, success and failure. A bestselling science writer with an international reputation, Gribbin is among the few authors who could even attempt a work of this magnitude. Praised as “a sequence of witty, information-packed tales” and “a terrific read” by The Times upon its recent British publication, The Scientists breathes new life into such venerable icons as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling, as well as lesser lights whose stories have been undeservedly neglected. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #732457 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-21
• Released on: 2003-10-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 647 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As expansive (and as massive) as a textbook, this remarkably readable popular history explores the development of modern science through the individual stories of philosophers and scientists both renowned and overlooked. Prolific popular science writer Gribbin wants to use the lives of these thinkers to show how they "reflect the society in which they lived, and... the way the work of one specific scientist followed from that of another." While he makes this case well, the real joy in the book can be found in the way Gribbin (who has made complex science understandable in such books as In Search of Schr"dinger's Cat) revels not just in the development of science but also in the human details of his subjects' lives. He writes, "Science is made from people, not people by science," and the book weaves together countless stories of the people who made science, from the arrogance and political maneuverings of Tycho Brahe in the 16th century to Benjamin Thompson's exploits during the American Revolution as a spy for the British and his later life as Count Rumford of Bavaria (in the realm of science, he studied convection and helped discredit the caloric theory of heat). Though the names and discoveries become more and more prolific as the book reaches the 19th century, Gribbin does an admirable job of organizing his narrative around coherent topics (e.g., "The Darwinian Revolution," "Atoms and Molecules," "The Realm of Life"), leaving the reader exhausted by the journey, but in awe of the personalities and the sheer scope of 500 years' worth of scientific discovery. Illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* This is the most ambitious effort yet by astrophysicist Gribbin, who has written numerous biographical and topic-specific works. Gribbin uses biography as a vehicle to traverse science's history from Copernicus to the principals of the quantum and relativity revolutions. Or were they revolutions? Readers will find the author arguing against the notion; he promotes an evolutionary view in the biographical vignettes, describing how the greats in science, at some stage, tussled with the authority of predecessors. Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy were impediments nudged, not shoved, aside. Gribbin notes the arguments that gave them apparent weight until lifted by a contradicting experiment or observation. And there was a remarkable number of colorful figures among the performers noted here, with Gribbin alighting upon the likes of Benjamin Thompson, the American Tory who became a Bavarian count, discovered truths about heat, and founded the laboratory that produced Michael Faraday, one of the most storied lives in science. Populated by such characters and replete with scientific clarity, Gribbin's work is the epitome of what a general-interest history of science should be. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Praise for The Scientists

“Essential reading...tells the story of science as a sequence of witty, information-packed tales...complete with humanizing asides, glimpses of the scientist’s personal life and amusing anecdotes.”
—London Sunday Times, Books of the Year

“Excels at making complex science intelligible to the general reader...If you’re looking for a book that captures the personal drama and achievement of science, then look no further.”—The Guardian

“Gripping and entertaining...wonderfully and pleasurably accessible... Much of the history of science reads like a detective story, which in the hands of a skilled narrator like Gribbin makes the description of each new advance appear as an illumination.”—The Independent on Sunday

“Tremendous...moves me to bestow a reviewer’s cliché I long ago vowed never to use: a tour de force.”
—The Spectator

“A splendid book...exposes the factual roots of some of science’s well-known tales (for example, Galileo never dropped weights of different sizes from Pisa’s leaning tower).”—The Economist

“A magnificent history...enormously entertaining.”—The Daily Telegraph

Customer Reviews

The History of Science and the Scientists
It is very difficult for me to dislike a book like this. I am a big fan of scientific histories and this is a very good one. Gribbin takes us through the development of Western science from its roots in the Renaissance through modern threads of research. His prose is very readable and well organized even as he takes us through the major topics of physics, chemistry and biology.

One of the things that makes his book so readable is that he focuses a lot of his energy on the lives and personalities of the great scientists. Though we get a grounding in the theories, we get more about science as a human pursuit which is often forgotten in our technologically-swamped age. It is a nice approach through which we not only get to hear about the ones everybody knows--Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc.--but a number of names with which even a science teacher like myself is less familiar.

My main problem with this book is that Gribbin's prejudices show through loud and clear. He is clearly not a supporter of Thomas Kuhn's ideas of scientific revolution which I think have a certain validity and usefulness though Gribbin is correct in that science would progress even without revolutions; however, it would not likely have progressed in the way that Gribbin himself outlines so well. Gribbin also clearly has some problems with the really famous scientists like Einstein and, in particular, Newton. I'm not quite clear why Gribbin is so anti-Newton but his assertions that everything discovered by Newton and Einstein would have eventually been discovered by other scientists, while likely true, dismisses the fact that these genius certainly accelerated our understanding. In addition, in my view, men like Newton, Darwin and Einstein had a capability to see the big picture far beyond that of any of their contemporaries. They deserve the credit they usually receive and Gribbin's complaints often come off sounding like sour grapes from a less successful scientist.

Still, Gribbin makes no secret of his views and no apologies and I can appreciate that. He has done a great service with this book. Obviously, with all the ground he has to cover, even at 600+ pages he cannot go into much depth; however, he presents a fascinating story of the men and women who have done so much to shape our modern world. It is worth reading for any educated person.

Science is done by men who can be very human
I do want to point out that this is a very good book. I did give it five stars after all. It is a great book for getting a good view of several scientists and their contributions to the sciences and engineering from the late renaissance period to modern times.

The topic our kind author, John Gribbin, is tackling is very large and no one book can hope to cover the entire topic. Even, as is the case here, in a book of almost 700 pages. Gribbin has chosen to focus on the interplay among the scientists, mainly when he wants to segway from one scientist to another, and the social implications of their discoveries... including much on the political realties of the time. Especially in the case of Galileo Galilei, where the political issues can be as important as his scientific discoveries.

I would say that the great weakness to this approach is that he focus's a lot of those who invented things, and less on those who developed new ways of thinking about the world. He claims to be doing the later, and does do a good job of it at times, but he appears to ignore the implications of a quote from Galileo he likes to use a lot: "science is written in the language of mathematics". Gribbin almost totally ignores the contributions the people he covers made to mathematics, and pure mathematicians have trouble even getting a mention from him. For example, in discussing Newton he could have discussed Gottfried Leibnitz a little, but instead just mentions that Newton and him argued about who discovered Calculus as leaves it at that.

The second great weakness of this book is there is no quick introduction to the best of the Greek and Roman philosophers who did a lot of science. Aristotle was thought highly of for a lot of good reasons by people in the middle-ages, and he was right about a lot of things. It is easy, especially now-a-days, to think that the ancient Greeks sure missed the boat on a lot things. Aristotle gets mentioned, now and again, is passing, but I haven't even run across a mention of Archimedes (when discussing Newton and Calculus it would have been nice to point out that Archimedes came close to discovering it almost 2000 years before. Some think the only reason he missed was the faulting numeral system he had to work with), Pythagorus, or Euclid.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the Greeks and other ancients got most of the things correct, especially when you consider that they didn't have many of the tools that the later true scientists had access too.

Then there are the two great oversights among great scientists that I think would have site well into the mold he was using: Pasteur and Goddard. Not minor folks in the history of science.

Because he couldn't cover everything, I overlook these problems and still give it a high rating. People should know that their is a lot of ground to cover in science and the history of science and seek out more information on the topic. Especially since an informed populace is the requirement and basis for a democracy. People need to understand how science and true scientists work in order to have informed opinions about many of the issues facing society today.

Still a fine work and worthy of anybody library.

Previous reviewer seems picky and a bit wrong
The complaint regarding chapter 6, page 220, is not correct. All of CO2 is used by the plant in the "dark" reaction of photosynthesis. The oxygen comes from water-the oxygen is released (which is also used by plants and any other cell with mitochondria, not just animals) and the hydrogen is incorporated into glucose. I have ordered, but not read, the book.