Science, Alphabetically

This post is a review of the book ABCs of Science by Giuseppe Mussardo.

General review: The author exposes the reader to some of the great concepts and discoveries of science through the lens of personality and history. This is not a bad idea, in my opinion, as it gives the book coherence and the material the fascination and immediacy of story. As may be expected, there are 26 chapters, arranged in alphabetical order of name or topic: the chapters deal with Abel, Boltzmann, Chandrashekhar...you get the idea.

The writing is sprightly, making the book a brisk read. Even quite technical and deep philosophical concepts have been exposed with a light hand. Of course, it is impossible to cover all of science in 26 chapters, and there are many important omissions (e.g. relativity, the theory of evolution, the theory of continental drift). But the book's aim seems to be to bring the reader into the business of reading science, and then let them continue with other books if they need more information. In that, I think it succeeds quite well.

15 Fun Facts: I enjoyed the trivia I picked up from this book. Before I read this book, I didn't know that

1. Abel thought Cauchy was crazy

2. Lise Meitner was a student of Boltzmann

3. Boltzmann had taken piano lessons from Bruckner

4. Chandrashekhar and Heisenberg enjoyed drives together on the Madras marina

5. Atle Selberg was inspired by the notebooks of Ramanujan

6. Sophie Germain posed as a man while publishing her papers

7. Fermat's main inspiration was Diophantus

8. The sharp-tongued Irene Curie gave her thesis to Frederic Joliot to read, hoping that 'his reading was less boring than his writing'

9. Kepler earned some side money by practicing astrology

10. Tycho Brahe was the grandson of an admiral

11. Pauli's middle name was kept after Mach

12. Schrodinger had three children from three women, none of them his wife

13. Landau was motivated by Le Rouge et le Noir

14. Roentgen was the assistant of Kundt

15. C. N. 'Frank' Yang Americanized his name after Ben Franklin, whom he admired

More: The author has described historical scenes quite believably - e.g. Faraday's lecture at the Royal Society, Roentgen's discovery of X-rays, Lise Meitner's crossing of the war front, Oppenheimer's trial, Kammerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity, Jung's psychoanalysis of Pauli.

There are some characters whom I had not met before in popular books on science, such as Thomas Harriott, Rasetti, Spallanzani, Touschek (a particularly amusing persona), and Le Gentil.

Summary: The book has a number of amusing quotes, all of which I succeeded in resisting to reproduce except the juicy one above by Irene Curie. All in all, a good read.