A sweeping intellectual biography that restores the Enlightenment polymath to the intellectual, scientific, and courtly worlds that shaped his early life and thoughtDescribed by Voltaire as ';perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,' Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (16461716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men.
Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA's Space Complex explores the infrastructural history of the United States rocket launch complex.
A vivid portrait of the life and work of Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus (17071778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals.
Modern scientific research has changed so much since Isaac Newton's day: it is more professional, collaborative and international, with more complicated equipment and a more diverse community of researchers.
Since ancient times, we have tried to make sense of our universe by observing objects far beyond our abilities to see or touch from the smallest atom to the farthest star.
Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger.
This volume explores the Industrial Age (1860-1914), bringing together published and archival primary sources with introductory essays that contextualize a period of extraordinary social, cultural, and economic transformation.
'How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?
'The importance of the end in view prompted me to undertake all this work, which seemed to me destined to bring about a revolution in physics and chemistry.
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.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose questions some of the most fashionable ideas in physics today, including string theoryWhat can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe?
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.
Traveling with the Atom is a historical travel guide to the development of one of the most significant and enduring ideas in the history of humankind: the atomic concept.
Margaret Thatcher was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, during which time her Conservative administration transformed the political landscape of Britain.