No comments about 101 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein: Sex, Science, And the Secrets of the Universe.

5 comments about Stephen Hawking: A Quest For The Theory Of Everything.

1. 
   I felt that Ferguson achieved a nice balance by intermingling Hawking's biography with introduction to his theories. It allows your brain to alternate between working on science and returning "back to earth" to meet an interesting human being with all his problems and victories. The science part is very layman-friendly, and at the same time is not too slow for the scientifically-minded (just a bit too politically correct, but it's understandable). The biography part is tactful, and with just the right amount of detail. The book is clear and inspiring, and she convinced me to read Hawking's "A brief history of time".
   
   Strangely enough, Hawking's book turned out to be not as clear and inspiring as Ferguson's book. She painted him as the king of clarity, conciseness, and humor, but I don't get such an impression at all from reading his book. So now I have mixed feelings: I respect Ferguson for being good at writing and teaching (better than Hawking at both), but I'm annoyed with her for the false advertisement.



2. After reading A Brief History of Time I decided that I wanted to learn more about Stephen Hawkings himself and how he became who he is today. I picked up this book written by Kitty Ferguson, which is claimed to be a biography and started reading it. After about twenty pages she was done talking about his life and started talking about his theories. This was disappointing to me because I thought the book was a biography.
   
   As I continued reading I became somewhat confused while she told about Hawkings discoveries. The explanations were little or none in trying to get the reader to understand the ideas. It did not help that there were very few small illustrations that were in the book to go along with her explanations. If there were highly detailed color illustrations such as those in A Brief History In Time, it might have been much easier to understand.
   
   I did enjoy the beginning of the book where Kitty goes into detail about the beginning of Hawkings life but I feel like it was just an overview of how he became who he is today. I would not recommend this book, instead I would recommend A Brief History In Time because it is much easier to understand because it has great illustrations and is not so mathematical.



3. I really liked this book at times, but found Kitty tries to hard to explain Hawking's theories. If you are not one of the Mensa crowd then it gets a little meaningless like similar to reading Greek, can you speak or read Greek? not me! Some of Hawking's theories are explained well and are pretty straight forward, such as the singularity theory and how many believe the universe has expanded and then retracted back to a singularity and then expanded and retracted over and over. Also it goes into detail about his belief that particles can escape black holes, once it reaches the event horizon it splits the negative may fall directly into the black hole past the even horizon and the positive falls away from the event horizon freeing it.This aside what I really wanted to read more about was the man Hawking himself. I mean come on, I've already read "A brief history of time". In short this book is short on explaining much about Stephen and tries to hard to explain some of his many theories.



4. Kitty Ferguson gives a lot of info on Stephen Hawking's life and works, being a small book in size it is full of interesting theories on Universe and Black Holes. It is purely scientific book thus it tries to explain everything scientifically, eventhough Stephen Hawking sometimes accepts that science cannot prove some things that are beyond our reach, nevertheless he does not accept that the whole universe is a God's creation.

   "The Creation of the Universe" by Hârun Yahya is an excellent book which explains scientifically how God has created the Universe.




5. After reading "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking, I was absolutely taken with astrophysics. Now, I'm no professional, but I could understand Hawking's book even if I had to learn to concentrate on what I was reading completely and reread some places. Hawking attempted to explain even the most complicated things - and succeeded. I thought I could pick up Kitty Ferguson's book for some easy reading on Hawking's discoveries - boy, was I wrong!

   Kitty Ferguson makes absolutely no attempt to explain the things she's talking about. None! She simply gives you facts that are impossible to accept without explanations. For the most part, I did know what she was talking about - and even then I was astounded by how confusing she had managed to make it all seem, and how imprecise a few of her facts and analogies were.

   If you understand the things she's talking about (and you probably do understand most of the things if you know at least something about Hawking's discoveries), you have no need to read this book. It's not even that good of a biography. If you don't know a thing about astrophysics, but would like to learn and, what's much more important, understand these things, pick up another book - and I myself would suggest the aforementioned "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking.

1 comments about Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind (Cambridge Science Biographies).

1. A very distinguished female scientist, in whose long life of 92 years, she experienced and contributed to Victorian science. Neeley takes us back to that era. She shows how Somerville became well known to the educated via such books as "Mechanism of the Heavens" (1831) and "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences" (1834). They were well received and helped popularise science, and also the (shocking!) concept that a woman could write such analytic prose. That such deeds were not a male preserve.

   To be sure, from our vantage point, some of Somerville's analyses may seem strained. Prior to James Maxwell's discoveries of his equations that unified electricity and magnetism, those effects could only be treated in a vague, qualitative fashion. Neeley's excerpts of Somerville's writings reveal this. Along with a florid, turgid style. But keep in mind that this was the accepted style of that era. And until Maxwell came along, her speculations were arguably the best any scientist could do.

No comments about Banneker: The Afro-American Astronomer.

No comments about "Almost a Man of Genius": Clemence Royer, Feminism, and Nineteenth-Century Science (Lives of Women in Science).

No comments about The Hidden Structure: A Scientific Biography of Camillo Golgi.

1 comments about Jerry Wiesner, Scientist, Statesman, Humanist: Memories and Memoirs.

1. Jerome B. Wiesner is far from being a household name, but he was arguably one of the most significant figures in science and technology in the middle part of the twentieth century. He was the President's Science Advisor during the term of John F. Kennedy, and president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), between 1966 and 1975. He was an outspoken advocate of nuclear arms control, believing it the only way to prevent nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and was a founding member of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity. During his tenure as presidential science advisor he was involved in the build-up of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to accomplish Project Apollo, the commitment to land Americans on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.
   
   A longstanding faculty member at MIT, Wiesner first made a name for himself in the immediate post-World War II era by assisting national leaders in setting science and technology policy. Two areas, especially, sparked his involvement. The first was nuclear weapons and the deterrence theory then current during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Wiesner favored a strong military capability for the United States, but always argued for efforts limiting the number of nuclear warheads available to both sides. Accordingly, Wiesner participated in the Geneva summit of 1958 and the Pugwash conference of 1960, in both cases making arguments in favor of strategic arms limitations.
   
   The second area where Wiesner played an especially important role was in the Cold War rivalry concerning space flight. At the time of Sputnik in October 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked him to serve on a special science advisory committee charged with revamping the federal government's oversight of critical science and technology development efforts. He advocated the creation of NASA in 1958 and the consolidation of non-military space flight activities under its leadership. When John F. Kennedy was preparing to take office in late 1960, he appointed an ad hoc committee headed by Wiesner to offer suggestions for American efforts in space. Wiesner concluded that the issue of "national prestige" was too great to allow the Soviet Union leadership in space efforts, and therefore the U.S. had to enter the field in a substantive way. Wiesner also emphasized the importance of practical non-military applications of space technology--communications, mapping, and weather satellites among others--and the necessity of keeping up the effort to exploit space for national security through such technologies as ICBMs and reconnaissance satellites. He tended to de-emphasize the human space flight initiative.
   
   After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Wiesner resigned from government service and returned to MIT. He spent the rest of his career there in senior positions, much of it as its president.
   
   This work is a collection of documents and reminiscences by and about Jerry Wiesner and well worth the time to read. Some of the pieces were written by such luminaries as Theodore C. Sorensen, Edward M. Kennedy, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Others are by Wiesner and relate his passion for myriad aspects of science and technology in modern American life.

1 comments about Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science.

1. This is an excellent compendium of Pauling's life; detailing his major scientific contributions (smaller than is commonly supposed). It also deals with Pauling's shenaningans in destroying the careers of other scientists who disagreed with him. It is excellently written and thoroughly researched, though likely it will irritate the scientific community by exposing many of the sordid practices so common in "objective" science.

2 comments about BERNT BALCHEN (Smithsonian History of Aviation & Spaceflight).

1. The existing review of this book that appears on the Amazon site is an excellent one that gives great details about the book. All I wanted to say is that as a fellow author, and of Norwegian descent, I regretted every time I had to put this book down.
   There is a song by the late Canadian Stan Rogers that includes the line: "Now you know what it is to scale the heights and fall just short of fame, and have not one in ten thousand know your name."
   That was written about someone else, but it sure fits in Balchen's case. A man always on the verge of being at least as famous as Admiral Byrd. A man of incredible courage, inventiveness, and grace in the face of hostilities, both of nature and of Byrd himself. This is an awesome biography that ought to be the catalyst for the re-writing of every history textbook. I thank Carrol Glines for making the enormous effort.



2. Bernt Balchen is perhaps the most underappreciated hero of our times. A master flyer, an artist, a negotiator, and most of all, a soldier, Balchen's unassuming personality belied the fact that he had one of the most fascinating careers in aviation history. Balchen, unfortunately, was the victim of a vendetta by a man for whom he had done much, Admiral Richard E. Byrd. Byrd feared that Balchen would reveal that Byrd's famous first flight over the North Pole was in fact a fraud, and waged a life-long war against Balchen. Glines is a highly skilled biographer (Jimmy Doolittle, Roscoe Turner) and he makes the most of his talents here. His research is excellent, and he portrays Balchen in his true colors as a patriot who fought the Russians with the Finns in the First World War, then conducted clandestine operations with the Norwegian underground in the second. He was the confidant of the great flyers of the era, including Amelia Earhart, and was among the first to be capable of true instrument flight. Bernt Balchen Polar Aviator would make a fantastic movie, for it has everything--exploration, romance, combat, skullduggery, and most of all, heroism. Balchen was a strong, handsome man who would have been an Olympic boxer for Norway if he had not elected to learn to fly with the Norwegian navy. He became an expert in Polar matters, saved many lives, was important during the Cold War, and had thousands of friends who knew just what a hero he was. The United States government, however, allowed Senator Harry Byrd to block Balchen's promotion to general, forcing his retirment, and at one time, deported him! This is a great biography of a great man, done by a great biographer!

No comments about Feyerabend: Philosophy, Science and Society (Key Contemporary Thinkers).