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The Last Man Who Knew Everything
No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) the all-round examination he so richly deserves—until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame. As a physicist, Young challenged the theories of Isaac Newton and proved that light is a wave. As a physician, he showed how the eye focuses and proposed the three-colour theory of vision, only confirmed a century and a half later. As an Egyptologist, he made crucial contributions to deciphering the Rosetta Stone. It is hard to grasp how much Young knew. This biography is the fascinating story of a driven yet modest hero who cared less about what others thought of him than for the joys of an unbridled pursuit of knowledge—with a new foreword by Martin Rees and a new postscript discussing polymathy in the two centuries since the time of Young. It returns this neglected genius to his proper position in the pantheon of great scientific thinkers.
Genius: A Very Short Introduction
Homer, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy; Curie, Darwin, Einstein, Galileo, and Newton. What do these world-famous artists and scientists have in common?- apart from the fact that their achievements predate our own time by a century or more. Most of us would probably answer: all ten possessed something we call genius, which in each instance permanently changed the way that humanity perceived the world. But pressed to be more precise, we find it remarkably hard to define genius. Genius is highly individual and unique, of course, yet it shares a compelling, inevitable quality for professionals and the general public alike. Darwin's ideas are still required reading for every w...
Einstein on the Run
A "highly readable" account of the role Britain played in Einstein's life—by inspiring his teenage passion for physics and providing refuge from the Nazis (The Wall Street Journal). In late 1933, Albert Einstein found himself living alone in an isolated holiday hut in rural England. There, he toiled peacefully at mathematics, occasionally stepping out for walks or to play his violin. But how had Einstein come to abandon his Berlin home and go “on the run”? This lively account tells the story of the world’s greatest scientist’s time in Britain for the first time, showing why the country was the perfect refuge for Einstein from rumored assassination plots by Nazi agents. Young Einste...
Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction
Without writing, there would be no records, no history, no books, and no emails. Writing is an integral and essential part of our lives; but when did it start? Why do we all write differently and how did writing develop into what we use today? All of these questions are answered in this Very Short Introduction. Starting with the origins of writing five thousand years ago, with cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Andrew Robinson explains how these early forms of writing developed into hundreds of scripts including the Roman alphabet and the Chinese characters. He reveals how the modern writing symbols and abbreviations we take for granted today - including airport signage and text messaging - resemble ancient ones much more closely than we might think. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
The Riemann Notebook
Did the 19th century German mathematician Bernhard Riemann discover more about the intricacies of prime numbers than he published? Did a notebook survive the clear-out of his papers following his sudden death in Italy? Could this notebook enable the breaking of 21st century internet security?
The Man Who Deciphered Linear B
First discovered in 1900, on clay tablets among the ruins of the Palace of Minos at Knossos, Crete, Linear B script remained a mystery for over fifty years until 1952, when Michael Ventris discovered that its signs did not represent an unknown language as previously believed, but an archaic dialect of Greek, more than 500 years older than the Greek of Homer. This book tells the life story of Michael Ventris, an intriguing and contradictory man, a gifted linguist but a divided soul, together with that of his remarkable decipherment of Linear B. Dubbed the Everest of archaeology, the decipherment was all the more remarkable because Ventris was not a trained classical scholar but an architect who had first heard of Linear B as a schoolboy. An initial fascination became a lifelong obsession.
Sudden Genius?
Genius and breakthroughs appear to involve something magical. Andrew Robinson looks at what science does, and does not, know about exceptional creativity, and applies it to the stories of ten breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, including Curie's discovery of radium and Mozart's composing of The Marriage of Figaro.
