The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments
by: George Johnson
Published by: Vintage Books
Buy From Amazon.com
Reviewed by Mark Owens
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it’s hard to argue with George Johnson’s view of The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. Readers will naturally wonder why their favorite scientist in their personal field of interest was left off the list, and Johnson recognizes this; the book is filled with his personal collection of bests. Names like Galileo, Newton and Pavlov will ring a bell in the memories of most folks, but other names like Harvey, Michelson, Millikan are more remote due to their specializations.
This book is written mainly for physicists, chemists and engineers, people pursuing or with college degrees and a good working background in science. What’s amazing is that Johnson is able to document the experiments to this level of detail, while he is not a scientist by schooling. Johnson is a writer by trade with a master’s degree in Journalism. Perhaps this is why the book is joyfully readable.
Each of the ten chapters focuses on a specific experiment representing a breakthrough in some field. For example, Michael Faraday’s search for something deeply hidden, tying together electricity, magnetism and light using demonstrations (1850) long before Maxwell wrote his unifying set of equations (1870). A substantial back-story is given about Faraday, describing his early life, strange jobs, and ambitions. Who would have known he was affected by Lord Byron’s (the famous poet) daughter Lady Ada Lovelace. This type of entertaining material is woven into each stand-alone chapter.
Descriptions of the different experiments also come complete with copies of original drawings and handwritten pages from the scientist’s personal notebooks. This attention is to detail is rewarding. The dialog doesn’t list references in-line for readability purposes, but at the end of the book, a bibliography with more than 150 entries is provided. Science students interested in a particular scientist covered in this text would do well to add this book to their list.
Armchair Interviews agrees.
Author’s Web site: http://sciwrite.org
From our armchair to yours...
