Customer Reviews

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

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This is Dr. Pickover's first scientific book since his A Beginner's Guide to Immortality and The Mobius Strip writings of 2006. After over a year of pursuing science fiction, the author has provided us with a work that was worth waiting for. This is his best yet.

Archimedes to Hawking is no dry listing of scientific laws. Yes, it does have the important laws of science and the runners-up which Pickover generously calls the "Great Contenders." The reason that the book runs to five hundred pages is that Pickover describes the lives and works of the lawgivers. These are not just people who showed up. Their biographies show that they worked at it. "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

Although the illustrations appear to be more for decoration than explanation, some are quite stunning. I particularly liked Bode's Virgo and Hooke's Flea, even if they have nothing to do with the laws named for those two. More illustrations like those would have been nice.

The author's approach is interesting. The laws are arranged chronologically. Archimedes is the first, but we have to skip almost two millennia to the Renaissance to find the next. The Industrial Revolution then brings the bulk of the science. There is very little past the turn of the twentieth century. Only three of the scientists named in this collection are still alive. Perhaps we have stopped naming scientific laws after people because we regard the laws of nature more as discovery than personal invention, or maybe it is that we are so expectant of future refinements that we now distrust the concept of the immutable law.

The geography of the lawgivers is mostly European. The bulk of the laws are attributed to French, English, and German physicists and chemists. Americans are fourth in number, but only if you include the runner-up category.

Although Pickover is not a physicist by training, he shows that he understands the thought process of the physicist. He shows their quest for understanding of the principles of the universe, the search for the beauty and symmetry of nature.

Even more, Pickover has learned to think like a physicist. Pickover gives a rational explanation for his inclusion of works in the great laws and the runner-up categories. Many people may be surprised to find that Maxwell's Equations do not have a chapter of their own but share the Faraday chapter, while relatively obscure works are included, even one of the runners-up that includes my name. Pickover explains that the individual laws that make up Maxwell's Equations were developed by other people: Ampere, Faraday, Gauss. For a book like this it is necessary to make choices. The author explains his reasoning in a convincing manner. You may argue with his choices, but I think that if he errs, it is mostly on the side of inclusion, not exclusion.

I do not think that you have to be a physicist or chemist to appreciate this book, but some formal science training may help you to appreciate the simplicity and beauty of the equations. I see this book becoming a standard reference work for those who study the physical sciences or the history of science. Or you may just like it for the joy of the science and the history.

Cliff Pickover's newest book is both significant and unique. The blend of factual data and biographically interesting stories of the scientists lends itself to being appealing to a wide variety of readers. No other book that I'm aware of covers both a wide range of scientific laws in addition to covering the back story behind how those laws were developed. Michael Guillen's Five Equations That Changed the World is similar in both interest and in target audience, but the Pickover book is covers many more laws and people. Jennifer Bothamley's Dictionary of Theories, in contrast, has a much wider scope (and including non-scientific theories), but the special interest of the back story is absent, again distinguishing the Pickover book as distinctly different.

Archimedes to Hawking can be enjoyed by everyone with a curious mind: why DO we name some physical laws after people and some not? how did these geniuses live, and what prompted them to do the work in their fields? how did they stumble upon a brilliant concept, and what struggles did they go through to prove it? All written with Cliff's unique and entertaining style.

In all, it's a brilliant book that I would recommend to anyone. I plan on recommending that my science teachers have their students buy the book for summer reading for our high school science courses.

Science is often erroneously, I think, seen as "cold and austere like sculpture" as Bertrand Russell once described the field of mathematics. But, the story told by Pickover of some of the great laws of science and the lawgivers who gave us these laws is much different from that. It is a story of incredible human passion, of people like Michael Faraday who described electricity as "the soul of the universe", the modestly educated Pierre Curie who won a Nobel Prize in physics, and Robert Hooke who invented the hygrometer to measure humidity after observing that the hairs of the beard of a goat would bend when wet and straighten out when dry. Other figures endured bizarre afflictions, strange religious beliefs, harsh criticism from rivals, and even simultaneous discoveries of their own work by others. Yet, they triumphed and continued in what Murray Gell-Mann described as "the most persistent and greatest adventure in human history, this search to understand the universe."

Pickover describes the laws, the lawgivers, and the nature of scientific laws in a brisk and lively pace, and peppers the book with loads of color and black and white illustrations. And, since you will doubtlessly want to learn more, there is a generous supply of references, both in print and on the internet. Science is dull and dry - nah, don't believe it. It's full of life and human drama when Pickover tells the story!

Dennis W. Gordon
Madison, Wisconsin

This was the first book by Cliff Pickover that I've read and it's made me want to read more. I'm giving this book five stars because it was so well-written and interesting, and the subject matter was presented with such creativity it was a fun read for someone like me, who does not have a background in science or mathematics. I admit to briefly skimming over the physical laws, but I devoured the biographical sections on each of the lawgivers and found their lives truly fascinating. I also appreciated the "Further Reading" and "Conversation Starters" in each chapter. The author noting current events in the world at the time each lawgiver was alive was very cool, an excellent touch, for it provided perspective on the big picture and made their accomplishments all the more remarkable (if that's possible). Often while I was reading this book I thought of my teachers in high school and wished they'd had some of Pickover's storytelling skills, because knowing about the lives of lawgivers would have been a great motivator. For that reason I think teachers would find this book valuable, but it's also a book for everybody, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in the quirky, remarkable people who changed the way the world thinks.

For anyone with an interest in astronomy, astrophysics, or just a passing interest in modern science and it's history, Archimedes to Hawking, by Clifford Pickover is a must addition to your personal library. Clifford Pickover, while not being a scientist himself, manages to take the reader by the hand and lead them through two-thousand years of study, testing, trial-by-error, and in some cases depression and alienation. In the end, I was touched by man's ability to adapt his beliefs to match the "known" world around him.

One of the insights that happened to me personally as I read about Kepler's search for the Laws of Planetary Motion was profoundly moving. As I read this part of the book (I didn't necessarily take them in order) I was moved when I realized that what I was reading in the matter of an evening was the work of a life time of searching, study, sacrifice, and in some cases knowledge that came only with the near ruin of their personal lives, Kepler included. That thought sent shivers through me.

Pickover does a masterful job in presenting, sometimes very difficult material and concepts in a manner that makes it easy for the non-scientist. Though I've been an amateur astronomer for more than 30 years, the fact is that I'm not a scientist, but I had no difficulty with the material in Archimedes to Hawking. The other point to be made is the completeness of the coverage of the material, Pickover doesn't miss much, at least to this laymans mind. The chapters are compact and the explanations are wonderful.

Whether you read Archimedes to Hawking chronologically or whether you do as I did and read the chapters according to your interests doesn't matter. The book will keep you coming back for more.

Great illustrations!

I highly recommend this must volume.

Peace always.

I bought this book hoping for a historical analysis of great minds in science. Instead, this is mainly a series of technical science lectures (complete with instruction in calculus-based equations) and mini-biographies. The only overarching themes developed by the author are that his "great minds" were commonly Christian, polymaths, and lived in the 1800s. This was completely insufficient to hold my interest for over 500 pages of small type. As the final blow, while the book does start with Archimedes (per the title), Hawking is not discussed.

If you want good explanations of forty arbitrarily chosen laws of science, this would be a good book. If you want forty mini-biographies of arbitrarily chosen scientists (interspersed with small amounts of other historical events and liberal amounts of unrelated science quotations), this would be a good book. Each of the forty sections stands alone. If you want a historical analysis that develops themes progressively from the beginning of the book to the end, this book would be a bad choice.

This is a great book. As a mechanical engineering student i have seen about 95% of the equations or laws in this book. while learning these laws and using them in courses we never learn about the people who came up with the laws and i have always been curious about them. i really enjoyed learning about these people behind the greatest scientific discoveries we have thus far discovered.

It took me awhile to get used to the style of this book but once I did I couldn't put it down. The sidebars and interesting facts about the scientists made them come alive. Good Job!!! Highly recommend...

The book made me--a lover of words--want to go back and study math and science, topics that generally bored the dickens out of me. This material was never taught in the public schools I attended, though they were top rated. Wish I'd had a teacher who could've inspired me the way this book has done.

This 500+ pages book presents a beautiful overview of science laws and the scientists that discovered them. The mathematical expression of each law or equation is written down and explained with great clarity. Then, detailed historical and biographical information is provided. For example, the reader will find out that the italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro studied law rather than physics while gaining a scientific background through selfstudy. There are plenty of citations concerned with the laws of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Perhaps biology and its exponents (Darwin, Mendel, etc.) are underrepresented probably because the higher complexity of biological science poses a limit to its mathematization. One possible improvement that could be adopted in future editions of the book is the inclusion of graphs or 2D plots which may provide additional insights into each law as well as drawings showing the physics behind specific laws (for example, Bragg's law of diffraction is often explained by showing how X-rays interact with surface atoms). Also, some laws are associated to specific instruments, e.g. the Kohlrausch bridge, and including figures or pictures of such instruments may enhance our understanding and appreciation of the laws of science.