Science

From award-winning science writer John Gribbin, Science: A History is the enthralling story of the men and women who changed the way we see the world, and the turbulent times they lived in. From Galileo, tried by the Inquisition for his ideas, to Newton, who wrote his rivals out of the history books; from Marie Curie, forced to work apart from male students for fear she might excite them, to Louis Agassiz, who marched his colleagues up a mountain to prove that the ice ages had occurred. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before. ''Gripping and entertaining ... Wonderfully and pleasurably accessible'' Independent on Sunday ''Tremendous ... moves me to bestow a reviewer''s cliché I long ago vowed never to use: a tour de force'' Spectator ''A magnificent history ... enormously entertaining'' Daily Telegraph ''A splendid book ... demolishes innumerable myths and exposes the factual roots of some of science''s well known tales (for example, Galileo never dropped weights of different sizes from Pisa''s leaning tower)'' Economist ''We experience his subjects'' triumphs and failures as if we knew them personally ... I found myself whizzing through the pages'' Sunday Telegraph John Gribbin is one of today''s greatest writers of popular science and the author of bestselling books, including In Search of Schrödinger''s Cat , Stardust , Science: A History and In Search of the Multiverse . Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and is currently Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.