The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-century Science, Including the Original Papers [Hardcover]

Alan Lightman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375421688 | ISBN-13: 978-0375421686 | Publication Date: November 8, 2005

An unprecedented explosion of creativity, insight, and breakthrough occurred in every field of science in the last century. From the theory of relativity to the first quantum model of the atom to the mapping of the structure of DNA, these discoveries profoundly changed the way we understand the world and our place in it. Now the physicist and novelist Alan Lightman tells the stories of two dozen of the most seminal discoveries.

In lucid and literary prose, Lightman paints the intellectual and emotional landscape of each discovery, portrays the personalities and human drama of the scientists involved, and explains the significance and impact of the work. He explores such questions as whether there were common patterns of research, whether the discoveries were accidental or intentional, and whether the scientists were aware of or oblivious to the significance of what they had found. Finally, Lightman gives an unprecedented and exhilarating guided tour through each of the original papers, which are included in the book. Here are Einstein and Bohr, McClintock and Pauling, Planck and Heisenberg, and many others in their own words, grappling with the nature of the world. Original in its scope and depth, The Discoveries offers an extraordinary exploration into the nature of scientific discoveries and the minds of the men and women who made them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enlightening collection, novelist and science writer Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) has assembled the original works announcing 25 of the world's pioneering scientific breakthroughs, coupling them with original essays to create a meditation on the "exhilaration of discovery." The lineup is a who's who of 20th-century science—Einstein, Planck, Fleming—ranging from quantum physics to astronomy, medicine, genetics and chemistry. Lightman is at his best when humanizing the scientists behind the world's major discoveries; he offers a stunning recollection from Caltech in the 1970s, when he was a graduate student, of Richard Feynman virulently attacking a world-weary Werner Heisenberg, author of the uncertainty principle, for a terrible lecture and, implicitly, for having worked on an atom bomb for the Nazis. Unfortunately, the heart of the collection, the landmark papers themselves, will prove to be stultifying and unintelligible for readers not well versed in science. Still, Lightman's elegant accompanying narratives are strong enough to carry the book. In an age when science is expanding at a faster clip than ever before, from supercomputing to cloning, this collection is a well-timed reminder of the humanity that surrounds and indeed drives scientific discovery. B&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* No one serious about literature would neglect Shakespeare and rely solely on his interpreters. But scientists rarely read what physicist and writer Lightman calls "original discovery papers." Believing that "the first reports of the great discoveries of science are works of art," Lightman has selected 25 twentieth-century "breakthrough" papers in fields ranging from quantum physics to molecular biology, medicine, and cosmology that essentially define the world as we know it. Writing with his signature clarity, warmth, and sense of wonder, Lightman introduces each landmark work with a crystalline essay elucidating the personality and life of each scientist and the significance of that scientist's paradigm-altering discovery. Lightman is especially sensitive to the suffering of Jewish German scientists under the Nazis and of women scientists in the days of institutionalized misogyny, and he writes with remarkable insight about the psychological effect of such counterintuitive findings as Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Fluent in every field he explicates, Lightman offers unprecedented commentary on each paper's style of reasoning. And how extraordinary to hold a single volume containing papers by Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Henrietta Leavitt, Linus Pauling, Edwin Hubble, and Barbara McClintock. This brilliantly conceived and assembled treasury belongs in every library. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (November 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421688
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421686
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #676,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Lightman, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1996, is adjunct professor of humanities at MIT. He is the author of several books on science, including "Ancient Light: Our Changing View of the Universe" (1991) and "Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists" (with R. Brawer, 1990). His works of fiction include "Einstein's Dreams" (1993), "The Diagnosis" (2000), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and, most recently, "Reunion" (2003).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Devoutly to be avoided, December 21, 2005

By 

M. Janssen (Minneapolis, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-century Science, Including the Original Papers (Hardcover)

I am teaching a history of science survey at the University of Minnesota and picked up this book thinking I could use it to assign some famous original papers to my students with readable and reliable introductions. Boy, was I wrong. Spot-checking the book in my area of expertise, Einstein (which, I may add, is supposedly also one of the author's areas of expertise), I quickly turned up a few howlers so bad as to make this book completely unfit for classroom use. In section 4, on special relatiivty, Lightman calls the Michelson-Morley experiment "one of the most important scientific experiments of all time" and claims that Michelson "was awarded the Nobel prize for his "failure" [to detect the earth's motion through the ether]" (p. 62). In a famous article first published in 1969 and still readily available, Harvard historian Gerald Holton disposed of this myth of the Michelson-Morley experiment ("Einstein, Michelson, and the "Crucial" Experiment." Isis 60 (1969): 133-197. Reprinted in Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein. Rev. Ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 279-370). Lightman appears to be blissfully ignorant of the literature on the history of relativity. Section 1 on Planck is even worse. On p. 3 of his book, he writes, eloquently but even eloquently stated falsehoods are false: "The seemingly smooth flow of light pouring through a window is, in reality, a pitter-patter of individual quanta, each far too tiny and weak to discern with the eye. Thus began quantum physics." In a controversial book first published in 1978, Thomas S. Kuhn argued that Planck did not quantize much of anything and that quantum physics only started with Einstein in 1905 (Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). This book has been hotly debated since among historians of physics, but I do not know of a single serious historian of physics who has Planck introduce light quanta in 1900! Whatever Planck did in 1900, this he did not. Light quanta were introduced by Einstein in 1905 and met with strong resistance for almost 20 years from the rest of the physics community. When Planck recruited Einstein for a post in Berlin in 1913, he, Planck himself, actually noted in his official proposal that Einstein had sometimes gone overboard in his speculations, the light-quantum hypothesis being his prime example (see, e.g., Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 328). As I hope the reader will recognize, these are blunders, not minor mistakes. They go to the heart of the episodes Lightman discusses. And they could easily have been avoided had Lightman taken the trouble of familiarizing himself with some of the most obvious literature in history of physics. If he makes such a hash of the physics stuff he supposedly knows well, one wonders what howlers may be lurking in his introductions to papers outside his (and my) area of expertise. Hence my recommendation: devoutly to be avoided.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, but intros need work, March 8, 2006

By 

Samer T Ismail "SF & classical music fan" (Danbury, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-century Science, Including the Original Papers (Hardcover)

I'm surprised that a book like this wasn't published sooner; this book does an excellent job of collecting some of the landmark papers of 20th-century science. It's a shame that, in aiming this book towards a non-scientific audience, Lightman and/or the publishers felt the need to abridge the longer articles; at least it is clear where such abridgments have been made, and citations to the original publications are made.

I have to agree with Mr. Janssen below that there are some significant issues with the background material that Lightman provides. For example, in discussing the Meitner/Frisch paper on nuclear fission, he talks about "isomers" instead of "isotopes." Similarly, in the chapter on neurotransmitters, he refers to individual nerve cells simply as "nerves," saying "nerves do not touch." As one more example, in the chapter on background radiation, Lightman describes "that surreal meeting" that took place in 1965, apparently referring back to an earlier event in that chapter; nothing in the chapter, however, indicates why it could be called "surreal."

[On the other hand, in Lightman's defense, he does *not* claim that Planck proposed quanta of light; he simply uses light as an intuitive example of the quanta of energy Planck did propose.]

I can't enthusiastically recommend this book, but it's probably worth borrowing from the library.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the "IGNORE" - read the book and enjoy, September 28, 2006

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-century Science, Including the Original Papers (Hardcover)

If you want an introduction to the major scientific discoveries of this century, this is a good place to start. Of course there are going to be those (as mentioned in other reviews) who dispute some of the claims of the discoverers featured here. That in itself is nothing new since science is nothing if not self-correcting and redefining.

The format is simple - an introduction that includes a short biography and an attempt to set the discovery in its cultural context. Following that is a description of the discovery and the thought process behind its discovery. Accompanying each article is the relevant paper by the actual scientist. One of the best aspects of the book was the explanation of that paper - whethter the approach was theoretical or experimental, how deeply past references were cited, etc. This is a good, solid read - nothing spectacular but a good overview.