Letters for the Ages Great Scientists

Letters for the Ages Great Scientists

Author: James Drake

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-09-12

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 139941612X

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A collection of the most fascinating letters by the world's greatest scientists. 'Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character' – Albert Einstein Scientists are not often remembered for their character, but rather for the enduring impact of their ideas, inventions, and discoveries. Letters for the Ages: The Great Scientists delves beyond the known historical facts and narratives to uncover the personal writings of some of history's greatest thinkers and innovators, drawing together over 100 private and intimate letters from across almost 500 years of scientific history. This collection illuminates the individuals behind humanity's greatest ideas and inventions – from the vaccine to the telephone, the engine to the X-ray – and those responsible for broadening our understanding of our world and the universe beyond. Each letter provides us with an opportunity for exploration and empathy – each a new chance to understand the desires to create, discover and improve held at the core of our humanity. Immerse yourself in the words of some of history's greatest scientific minds, including Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Galileo Galilei, Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking amongst many others.


Letters to a Young Scientist

Letters to a Young Scientist

Author: Edward O. Wilson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0871407000

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Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation. Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.


Dear Professor Einstein

Dear Professor Einstein

Author: Albert Einstein

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13:

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We are often amazed by the curiosity of children and the questions they ask. And letters to and from children are always appealing, especially so when they are written to someone famous. In Dear professor Einstein, Alice Calaprice has gathered a delightful and charming collection of more than sixty letters from children to Albert Einstein. Einstein could not respond to every letter written to him, but the responses he did find the time to write reveal the intimate human side of the great public persona, a man who, though he spent his days contemplating mathematics and physics, was very fond of children and enjoyed being in their company. Whether the children wrote to Einstein for class projects, out of curiosity, or because of prodding from a parent, their letters are amusing, touching, and sometimes quite precocious. Enhancing this correspondence are numerous splendid photographs showing Einstein amid children, wearing an Indian headdress, carrying a puppet of himself, and donning fuzzy slippers, among many other wonderful pictures. This book is complete with a foreword by Einstein's granddaughter Evelyn, a biography and chronology of Einstein's life, and an essay by Einstein scholar Robert Schulmann on the great scientist's educational philosophy.


Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters

Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters

Author: Freeman Dyson

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 0871403870

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A lifetime of candid reflections from physicist Freeman Dyson, “an acute observer of personality and human foibles” (New York Times Book Review). Written between 1940 and the late 1970s, the postwar recollections of renowned physicist Freeman Dyson have been celebrated as an historic portrait of modern science and its greatest players, including Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Chronicling the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics, Dyson lends acute insight and profound observations to a life’s work spent chasing what Einstein called those “deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself.” Whether reflecting on the drama of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, or the demands of raising six children, Dyson’s annotated letters reveal the voice of one “more creative than almost anyone else of his generation” (Kip Thorne). An illuminating work in these trying times, Maker of Patterns is an eyewitness account of the scientific discoveries that define our modern age.