On Giants' Shoulders was written in 1998 by Melvyn Bragg, the book was assembled after a series of interviews Bragg had with current scientists about the world's greatest scientists such as which English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution?
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On Giants' Shoulders On Giants' Shoulders was written in 1998 by Melvyn Bragg. The book was assembled after a series of interviews Bragg had with current scientists about the world's greatest scientists such as Archimedes, Isaac Newton and Einstein. Bragg, who brands himself as a "non-scientist", conducted these interviews on BBC Radio 4 for other non-scientists. The book looks at the notion of being a "genius" and through discussions with 20th-century scientists explores the extent to which the great scientists of history were geniuses.
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Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} ( ; 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made pathbreaking contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( ; ] ; August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher and an important figure of German idealism. He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the continental tradition of philosophy, has become increasingly influential in the analytic tradition as well. Although Hegel remains a divisive figure, his canonical stature within Western philosophy is universally recognized.
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Life Science Library The Life Science Library is a series of hardbound books published by Time Life between 1963 and 1967, popular in its prime. Each of the twenty-six volumes explore a major topic of the natural sciences. They are intended for, and written at a level appropriate to, an educated lay readership. In each volume, the text of each of eight chapters is followed by a "Picture Essay" lavishly illustrating the subject of the preceding chapter. They were available in a monthly subscription from "Life" magazine. Each volume takes complex scientific concepts and provides explanations that can be easily understood. Einstein's Theory of Relativity is explained in a cartoon about a spy drama involving a train traveling very close to the speed of light; probability is explained with poker hands and the atomic table with common household items. Although progress has overtaken much of them, their explanations of basic science and the history of discovery in an area is still excellent. The Consulting Editors of the series are microbiologist René Dubos, physicist Henry Margenau, and physicist and novelist C. P. Snow.
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Ray Streater Raymond Frederick "Ray" Streater (born 1936) is a British physicist, and professor emeritus of Applied Mathematics at King's College London. He is best known for co-authoring a text on quantum field theory, the 1964 ""PCT, Spin and Statistics and All That.""
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Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life is a 2009 television documentary about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary theory of evolution through natural selection, produced by the BBC to mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth. It is part of the BBC Darwin Season. The presenter, David Attenborough, outlines the development of the theory by Darwin through his observations of animals and plants in nature and in the domesticated state, visiting sites important in Darwin's own life, including Down House, Cambridge University and the Natural History Museum, and using archive footage from Attenborough's many nature documentaries for the BBC. He reviews the development of the theory since its beginnings, and its revolutionary impact on the way in which humans view themselves - not as having dominion over the animals as The Bible says, but as part of the natural world and subject to the same controlling forces that govern all life on Earth.
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The Age of Wonder The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science is a 2008 popular science book about the history of science written by Richard Holmes. In it, the author describes the scientific discoveries of the polymaths of the late eighteenth century, and describes how this period formed the basis for modern scientific discoveries. It won the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, and the 2010 National Academies Communication Award.
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Émilie du Châtelet Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet (] ; 17 December 1706  – 10 September 1749) was a French natural philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and author during the early 1730s until her untimely death due to childbirth in 1749. Her most recognized achievement is her translation of and commentary on Isaac Newton's book "Principia" containing basic laws of physics. The translation, published posthumously in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation today. Her commentary includes a profound contribution to Newtonian mechanics—the postulate of an additional conservation law for total energy, of which kinetic energy of motion is one element.
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Charles Babbage Charles Babbage {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} ( ; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
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Electromagnetic mass Electromagnetic mass was initially a concept of classical mechanics, denoting as to how much the electromagnetic field, or the self-energy, is contributing to the mass of charged particles. It was first derived by J. J. Thomson in 1881 and was for some time also considered as a dynamical explanation of inertial mass "per se". Today, the relation of mass, momentum, velocity and all forms of energy, including electromagnetic energy, is analyzed on the basis of Albert Einstein's special relativity and mass–energy equivalence. As to the cause of mass of elementary particles, the Higgs mechanism in the framework of the relativistic Standard Model is currently used. In addition, some problems concerning the electromagnetic mass and self-energy of charged particles are still studied.
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Aditi Shankardass Aditi Shankardass (Hindi: अदिती शंकरदास ) is a British neuroscientist. She has been listed as one of the ""8 Scientists Who Are Changing The World"" alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Tim Berners Lee.
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Philosophers Behaving Badly Philosophers Behaving Badly is a 2005 book by Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson. The book's thesis is that the work and teachings of great philosophers cannot and should not be separated from their personal lives and problems. In this respect, the book's approach is completely new. The authors give as evidence numerous examples from the lives of 8 great philosophers (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault) to prove their claims. They emphasize, however, that their findings do not invalidate the thought of the philosophers concerned but shed new light on an old subject. The book was published in the U.K by Peter Owen Publishers and was praised as "fascinating and revealing" by Richard Edmonds in "The Birmingham Post" and by Peter Watson in "Times Higher Education" as "excellent", although Watson finally found its arguments rather inconclusive. It has also been criticized in both academic and non-academic spheres for its lack of academic rigour. However the authors do not claim it is a conventionally academic book.
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Richard Laughton Richard Laughton (1670?–1723) was an English churchman and academic, now known as a natural philosopher and populariser of the ideas of Isaac Newton.
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Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri (Persian: حکیم ایرانشهری‎ ‎ ) was a 9th-century Persian philosopher, mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer and author. According to traditional sources, he is the first figure in the wider Muslim world to be associated with philosophy after the advent of Islam.
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Atomism Atomism (from Greek ἄτομον , "atomon", i.e. "uncuttable", "indivisible") is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that nature consists of two fundamental principles: "atom" and "void". Unlike their modern scientific namesake in atomic theory, philosophical atoms come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, each indestructible, immutable and surrounded by a void where they collide with the others or hook together forming a cluster. Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.
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Isaac Newton in popular culture Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, natural philosopher, theologian, alchemist and one of the most influential scientists in human history. His "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" is considered to be one of the most influential book in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics by describing universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus.
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David Bohm David Joseph Bohm FRS (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.
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Nicholas Hill (scientist) Nicholas Hill (1570-1610?) was an English natural philosopher, considered a disciple of Giordano Bruno. He is known for his 1601 book "Philosophia epicurea".
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Lumières The Lumières (literally in English: "Enlighteners") was a cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual movement of the second half of the 18th century, originating in France and spreading throughout Europe. It included philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton. Over time it came to mean the "Siècle des Lumières" , in English the Age of Enlightenment.
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Heraclides Ponticus Heraclides Ponticus (Ancient Greek: Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικός "Herakleides"; c. 390 BC – c. 310 BC ) was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who was born in Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey, and migrated to Athens. He is best remembered for proposing that the Earth rotates on its axis, from west to east, once every 24 hours. He is also frequently hailed as the originator of the heliocentric theory, although this is doubted.
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David Hume David Hume ( ; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.
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Cavendish Professor of Physics The Cavendish Professorship is one of the senior faculty positions in physics at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on 9 February 1871 alongside the famous Cavendish Laboratory, which was completed three years later. William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire endowed both the professorship and laboratory in honor of his relative, chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish.