The human side of science : Edison and Tesla, Watson and Crick, and other personal stories behind science's big ideas

Description

With tongue-in-cheek illustrations by renowned science cartoonist Sidney Harris, this book takes the reader behind the scenes of scientific research to shine new light on the all-too-human people who do science. Abstract: With tongue-in-cheek illustrations by renowned science cartoonist Sidney Harris, this book takes the reader behind the scenes of scientific research to shine new light on the all-too-human people who do science Content: Introduction : science's evaluation system -- Democritus and Aristotle ponder the existence of atoms -- Aristotle, Aristarchus, Copernicus, and Galileo seek to determine Earth's place in the cosmos -- Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, and Gottfried Leibniz argue about motion and calculus -- The battling Bernoullis and Bernoulli's principle -- Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) have rival theories about heat -- Mendeleev, Meyer, Moseley, and the birth of the periodic table -- Westinghouse and Tesla vs. Edison : AC/DC titans clash -- Alfred Wegener stands his ground about continental drift -- Albert Einstein, Marcel Grossmann, Mileva Maric and Michele Besso struggle with relativity -- Albert Einstein's struggles continue -- Edwin Hubble and Harlow Shapley clash/cooperate over the universe's size -- Disastrous consequences of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn's discovery of nuclear fission -- Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Francis Crick determine the structure of DNA -- J. Craig Venter, James Watson, and Michael Hunkapiller race for the human genome -- Ten honorable mention mini-chapters.