Professional Science

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

At the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America's best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the S.S. United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when "made in America" meant the best.

The name of Charles Darwin is known to nearly all who have had the benefit of a Western-style education. It is synonymous with the theory of evolution and due to his perspective of man as an animal, his worked ushered in a new paradigm of understanding of the physical and mental behavior of man. However, because of the immense impact of his best known theory, most know only of his work through reviews and historical reports.

It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early 20th-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy", she was the first to describe what stars are made of.

In 1831, the HMS Beagle took sail. Onboard was a young Charles Darwin. He would set out on an adventure that would lead him to question everything about man's place in the world. The Voyage of the Beagle is the journal Darwin kept of his observations of the extraordinary and natural wonders he encountered, from volcanoes to the coral reefs of Australia. It would be these natural wonders that would lead to him questioning how the different species of the world came to be and eventually to his radical theories.

Lies viel, vergiss das meiste wieder, und sei schwer von Begriff! - Habe ein Hinterzimmer in deinem Geschäft! - Tu etwas, was noch nie zuvor jemand getan hat! - Mach deinen Job gut, aber nicht zu gut! - Philosophiere nur zufällig! - Bedenke alles, bereue nichts! Mit diesen und anderen Antworten auf die eine Frage "Wie soll ich leben?" führt Sarah Bakewell durch das ungewöhnliche Leben des Weingutbesitzers, Liebhabers, Essayisten, Bürgermeisters und Reisenden Michel de Montaigne.

Author Jeremy Gray provides a comprehensive and intellectually stimulating introduction to Bernhard Riemann’s life and paradigm-defining work. Beginning with his early influences - in particular, his relationship with his renowned predecessor Carl Friedrich Gauss - Gray goes on to explore Riemann’s specific contributions to geometry, functions of a complex variable, prime numbers, and functions of a real variable, which opened the way to discovering the limits of the calculus.

To a generation in revolt against authority, "Tune in, turn on, drop out" was a mantra, and its popularizer, Dr. Timothy Leary, a guru. A charismatic and brilliant psychologist, Leary became intrigued, and then obsessed, by the effects of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s while teaching at Harvard. What began as research into human consciousness turned into a mission to alter consciousness itself. Timothy Leary is the first major biography of one of the most controversial figures in postwar America.

Isaac Newton seemed to be a most unwanted child of the world. Ignored by his mother, scorned by contemporaries, seemingly at war with the world in which he lived, Newton turned his energies to things unseen. His laws of motion and law of universal gravitation would set the stage for a most extraordinary life. Follow along as you travel from a rugged stone farmhouse to Trinity College, Cambridge to the halls of London exhibitions where Newton found himself the celebrity of the age. Looking back on Aristotle, and inspired by all that Galileo had brought the world, Newton made his life work much of what is heralded as the modern age. He saw what no one else did, and his vision saw into the universe. See how he did it, and why.

This audiobook covers how Elon Musk went from getting bullied in school to small-time entrepreneur to CEO of two major companies that seem like they're straight out of science fiction - and how he almost went broke along the way. The aim of this audiobook is to be educational and inspirational with actionable principles you can incorporate into your own life straight from the great man himself.

The discovery of DNA’s structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Howard Markel skillfully recreates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin - fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s - who becomes a focal point for Markel.

Thomas Edison holds a unique legacy in the United States, but there's no denying that his inventions have benefited the world as a whole.

In February 1971, as Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell hurtled Earthward through space, he was engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. He intuitively sensed that his presence and that of the planet in the window were all part of a deliberate, universal process, and that the glittering cosmos itself was, in some way, conscious. The experience was so overwhelming, Mitchell knew his life would never be the same.

Sara Seager : la femme qui pourrait découvrir une autre Terre. Le récit d'une quête spirituelle et intime, à la fois dans ce monde et bien au-delà... En tant qu'astrophysicienne spécialiste des exoplanètes - ces planètes qui orbitent autour d'une étoile autre que le Soleil -, Sara Seager a passé une grande partie de sa vie la tête dans les étoiles. Pas facile dans ces circonstances de garder les pieds sur terre. Mais l'amour de son mari, Mike, et de ses deux fils lui permet de naviguer entre les mondes avec une relative aisance, malgré son trouble du spectre autistique.

Albert Einstein ist der Inbegriff des Genies. Kein Wissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhundert hat unser Verständnis vom Universum so revolutioniert wie er. Neben den teils verschlungenen Wegen zu seinen Theorien, widmet sich das Hörbuch auch dem Menschen, der diese Wege beschritt. Es beschreibt, wie Einsteins Kindheit in Deutschland, seine Arbeit im Schweizer Patentamt, aber auch sein komplexer Charakter und die daraus folgenden familiären Begebenheiten den großen Wissenschaftler formten.

Edward O. Wilson - winner of two Pulitzer prizes, champion of biodiversity, and Faculty Emeritus at Harvard University - is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet his celebrated career began not with an elite education but from an insatiable curiosity about the natural world and drive to explore its mysteries. Called "one of the finest scientific memoirs ever written" by the Los Angeles Times, Naturalist is a wise and personal account of Wilson's growth as a scientist and the evolution of the fields he helped define.

Celebrating the life and lasting legacy of Nintendo's legendary president! The Impact of Iwata chronicles the life and career of Satoru Iwata, the man who started his journey in the video game industry as a humble programmer and then rose through the ranks to become the global president of Nintendo, the biggest and most popular video game company in the world. Throughout 16 chapters, this book blends a chronological story of Mr. Iwata's life together with looks forward into the future, shining the spotlight on the lasting impact his early work has had, decades later.

"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.

In Building Unity, Prosserman breaks down the six steps to discovering “responsible impact” and building an organization that is growth-minded, values-based, and reflective of the needs of its community. Using stories of his own evolution, learning, and growth as a leader over 15 years, Prosserman parallels the creativity found in breakdancing with the innovation needed to build a sustainable non-profit.

'From cold cases and serial killers to the death of a spy, Peter's true life story is as gripping as the finest thriller' – Peter James, bestselling author of One of Us Is Dead Discover the truth beyond the police tape in What Lies Beneath, the arresting memoir of murder, investigation and...