Books about history of science

Thomas S. Kuhn's work explaining the process of scientific discovery. This text is the third edition and incorporates a new index.

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. This book is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization.

The tenth anniversary edition of the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius. With a new foreword by astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Galileo is seen as one of the greatest scientists ever. Little is known of his illegitimate daughter, Virginia. As a nun, she wrote 120 letters to her father from 1623 to her death from exposure and malnutrition ten years later. This text investigates the father-daughter relationship.

Part biography, part bibliographic quest, this is the story of the author's obsession with the book On the Revolutions by Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus altered the composition of the cosmos by placing the sun, and not the earth at the centre of the universe.

Among the group of Midlands amateur experimenters who formed the Lunar Society and kick-started the Industrial Revolution, were Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, James Watt and Erasmus Darwin. This account uncovers the friendships, political passions and love of knowledge that drove these men.

Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry by elucidating the structure of DNA - and won themselves a Nobel Prize. This title focuses on the real world of greatscientists and the excitement of their desperate attempts to beat Linus Pauling to the solution to one of the great enigmas of the life sciences.

This book is intended to be a concise account of the history of science in Western civilization from the Babylonians to Newton. Koestler attempts to demonstrate that during this period the astronomer as philospher enabled the peaceful co-existence of science and humanities in one vocation.

The author recounts the story of how the atomic bomb was developed, from the discovery at the turn of century of the vast energy locked inside the atom, to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan during the Second World War.

Presents contemporary beliefs about Divine Providence and the beginnings of life on earth. Written for the general public of the 1850s, this title provides an account of the scientific theory that lies at the root of our attitude to the universe.

Hidden behind velvet curtains above a stairway in a house in London's Piccadilly is an enormous and beautiful hand-coloured map - the first geological map of anywhere in the world. Its maker was a farmer's son named William Smith. Born in 1769 his life was beset by troubles. This title tells his story.

In this study of the Copernican Revolution, the author brings to a common focus the considered approach of the historian, the technical understanding of the scientist and the skill and experience of an able teacher.

Amidst the fervour of the Revolution, two French scientists were sent on an expedition to measure the world and establish the metre, which was to be one ten-millionth the distance from pole to equator. As one went north and the other south, their experiences diverged just as radically.

Amidst the fervour of the Revolution, two French scientists were sent on an expedition to measure the world and establish the metre, which was to be one ten-millionth the distance from pole to equator. As one went north and the other south, their experiences diverged just as radically.

When HMS Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. This title shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology, natural history, people, places and events.

Tells the human story of the nine planets of our solar system. This work traces the lives of each member, from myth and history, astrology and science fiction, to the data from the robotic space probes. It gives a view of the heavenly bodies that have captured the imagination since humanity's first glimpse of the glittering night skies.