The first publication of Albert Einstein's travel diary to the Far East and Middle EastIn the fall of 1922, Albert Einstein, along with his then-wife, Elsa Einstein, embarked on a five-and-a-half-month voyage to the Far East and Middle East, regions that the renowned physicist had never visited before.
An intellectual history of scurvy in the eighteenth centuryScurvy, a disease often associated with long stretches of maritime travel, generated sensations exceeding the standard of what was normal.
The story of unmanned space exploration, from Viking to todayDreams of Other Worlds describes the unmanned space missions that have opened new windows on distant worlds.
Why seismologists still can't predict earthquakesAn earthquake can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death, whether it's the catastrophic 2010 quake that took a devastating toll on the island nation of Haiti or a future great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California, which scientists know is inevitable.
Since Einstein first described them nearly a century ago, gravitational waves have been the subject of more sustained controversy than perhaps any other phenomenon in physics.
In The Business of Alchemy, Pamela Smith explores the relationships among alchemy, the court, and commerce in order to illuminate the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In line with the emerging field of philosophy of mathematical practice, this book pushes the philosophy of mathematics away from questions about the reality and truth of mathematical entities and statements and toward a focus on what mathematicians actually do-and how that evolves and changes over time.
The explosive debate that transformed our views about time and scientific truthOn April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time.
Why our approaches to Alzheimer's and dementia are problematic and contradictoryDue to rapidly aging populations, the number of people worldwide experiencing dementia is increasing, and the projections are grim.
Modesty, humor, compassion, and wisdom are the traits most evident in this illuminating selection of personal papers from the Albert Einstein Archives.
John Servos explains the emergence of physical chemistry in America by presenting a series of lively portraits of such pivotal figures as Wilhelm Ostwald, A.
Between 1945 and 1953, while the Soviet Union confronted postwar reconstruction and Cold War crises, its unchallenged leader Joseph Stalin carved out time to study scientific disputes and dictate academic solutions.
In the mid-eighteenth century, Swiss-born mathematician Leonhard Euler developed a formula so innovative and complex that it continues to inspire research, discussion, and even the occasional limerick.
Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy.
The story of how East Asians became "e;yellow"e; in the Western imagination-and what it reveals about the problematic history of racial thinkingIn their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white.
Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump.
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythologyGriffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants-these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Why absolute certainty is impossible in scienceIn today's unpredictable and chaotic world, we look to science to provide certainty and answers-and often blame it when things go wrong.
A biography of the brother and sister who helped found modern astronomyDiscoverers of the Universe tells the gripping story of William Herschel, the brilliant, fiercely ambitious, emotionally complex musician and composer who became court astronomer to Britain's King George III, and of William's sister, Caroline, who assisted him in his observations of the night sky and became an accomplished astronomer in her own right.
This book gathers wide-ranging essays on the Italian Renaissance philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno by one of the world's leading authorities on his work and life.
Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry.
In Moby-Dick, Ishmael declares, "e;Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
This overview of the leading locomotive producers in the United States during the twentieth century shows how they responded to a radical technological change: the replacement of steam locomotives by diesels.
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life.
The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind's active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed?
How science in medieval Europe originated in Buddhist AsiaWarriors of the Cloisters tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West.
A biography of the brother and sister who helped found modern astronomyDiscoverers of the Universe tells the gripping story of William Herschel, the brilliant, fiercely ambitious, emotionally complex musician and composer who became court astronomer to Britain's King George III, and of William's sister, Caroline, who assisted him in his observations of the night sky and became an accomplished astronomer in her own right.
An insider account of how researchers unraveled the mystery of the thawing ArcticIn the 1990s, researchers in the Arctic noticed that floating summer sea ice had begun receding.
In this this thrilling entry into The Scientists in the Field series, follow scientists as they search for dangerous asteroids in space, study asteroids that have crashed into the ground, and strive to prevent an asteroid strike if one ever threatens our planet.
The strange and surprising history of the so-called epidemic of bad posture in modern Americafrom eugenics and posture pageants to today's promoters of ';paleo posture'In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century's worth of nude ';posture' photos of college students.
A landmark history of early radio in Germany and the quest for broadcast fidelityWhen we turn on a radio or stream a playlist, we can usually recognize the instrument we hear, whether it's a cello, a guitar, or an operatic voice.
