The Scientists; A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

by John Gribbin

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307290719
• ISBN13: 9780307290717
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 647 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent biographical approach to the history of science

John Gribbon ranks among the best science writers for laymen, and this book once again reflects his ability to keep concepts accessable to non-specialists while still retaining the essential information about the scientific concepts being discussed. This books gives a detailed history of the developments of science from Copernicus to the present, focusing on biographical background as a means of aquiring a greater understanding of what was happening as the developments were unfolding. While this may sound like he might neglect science to focus on individuals, he actually does a very good job of avoiding useless information about people, and his biographical information about each scientist really does help one understand how science was developing. There are a few cases where he goes into a bit more biography than in really necessary, but when he does it is about people who were so interesting that I really wish he would have done it more often. As far as general histories of science go, this is the best I have encountered, though I wish he would have done a complete history instead of starting in the 16th century. The main point of his book, outside of simply being a history of science, is to argue for an "evolutionary" view of the development of science, meaning that science moves forward in a progressive, step-by-step manner rather than by sudden revolutions as Thomas Kuhn taught. The view that science advances by revolution rather than by evolution is very influential, especially among sociologists and non-scientists. Gribbon wished to show that this is not the view among actual scientists, and that the quantum revolution was really the only case of a "revulotion" in science. He explains other advancements in science (like Newton's theory of gravity) as building upon past advancements, not as a radical revolution. I myself am rather inclined to agree with both Gribbon and Kuhn. It seems that the advancements themselves come by evolution (so Gribbon is correct), but the general acceptance of the advancement within the scientific community usually comes in the more revolutionary method (i.e. a sudden shift in thinking in the scientific community as a whole), something which Gribbon often fails to acknowledge. As a whole, this is really a very, very good book. However, there are a few things I wish Gribbon had done differently. First, he really should have included more illustrations for difficult concepts. When he starts discussing some modern scientific discoveries, they are really quite confusing to someone who has not read about them before, and an illustration showing what he meant would have been extremely helpful (especially in the biochemistry and atomic physics sections). I imagine that they were not included to save space, as it is already a very long book. However, in the first half of the book he has a good number of full page pictures of both scientists (which is fine) and, for some reason, the first page of many of t

How to Get Your Nonscientist Teenager Interested in Science

This is the book to buy for that teenager who loves the humanities, religion, literature but is AFRAID of science. Astrophysicist John Gribbin writes superbly about the great developments of Western Science from Copernicus to Einstein or Mendel, Darwin, and Watson and Crick. He truly has a gift for explaining the basics of science without burying the reader in mathematics or technical language. The strategy is to explain scientific advances through the lives of the great men who pushed the limits of scientific advances...such as the race to discover the spiral helix structure of DNA or the thought experiments of Farady and Einstein.

Highly Readable

I found this book very enlightening. Considering the enormity of the task Gribbin cut out for himself, I was impressed by the achievement. The right amount of information, both personal and scientific, was presented for each scientist. I especially liked the section headings that helped me find my way around when refering to something written earlier. I never got lost in the sea of names and events that usually mark a book of this type. Gribbin's style is highly readable. I am a science teacher and will be using this in class.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

As an engineer, this book explained the history of discovery of most of the topics that were brushed upon during my engineering undergraduate degree. The author gives a detailed history of the key discoveries that scientists have made (including those not often recognized) and the key discoveries that were passed from scientist to scientist to allow them to stand upon each others shoulders to find the next discovery. This is not a detailed science book, but it is an excellent history book that goes into enough technical detail for this engineer without getting into equations and derivations. I recommend this book for those truly interested in the story of how the laws of science were discovered and how past scientists have helped us to get where we are today.

Simply the best

This is undoubtedly John Gribbin's best book, and only a real nit picker could object to the fact that it doesn't cover every single scientist who ever lived. Where Gribbin is so good is in weaving the story of scientists'lives together to tell a gripping story of how science as a whole has developed from the time of Copernicus to the beginning of the 21st century. The chapter about Benjamin Thomson aka Lord Rumford is particularly good, and Gribbin delights in telling you about the weirdness of many of his subjects, including Henry Cavendish who was the richest man in England, and a great scientist, but only ate boiled mutton. Even if you don't care about the science, this is still grsat history.