1 The Elegant Universe (Amazon, Amazon UK) Brian Greene (Vintage) pb 1999 2 A Brief History of Time (Amazon, Amazon UK) Stephen Hawking (Bantam) pb 1988 3 Just Six Numbers (Amazon, Amazon UK) Martin Rees (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) hb 1999 4 Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman! (Amazon, Amazon UK) (ed) Edward Hutchings (Vintage) pb 1985 […]
Anyone who visits the Alhambra palace in Granada will marvel at the intricate arabesque designs that decorate everything from the tiles and plasterwork to woodcarvings and the lattice-work in the windows. These designs from Islamic art are not only beautiful to look at but also rich in symmetry, involving the repetition of a fundamental motif […]
“The question of whether paranormal phenomena actually exist probably divides educated members of modern Western civilization as sharply as any other single issue. If it is true that the human brain can receive messages and control things in ways that cannot be explained normally, then this undermines the belief of most scientists and runs contrary […]
Originally inspired by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan, Lynda Williams began singing about her favourite subject – physics – in 1995. At the time she was a graduate physics student at San Francisco State University and realized that the best way to combine her interests in science and art was to become a […]
Read article: Solving a knotty problem
Publishers seem to have hit on a winning formula for non-fiction books in recent years. Take a seemingly esoteric subject, mix in lots of history, add plenty of anecdotes, keep it short, and print the book in a nice, compact form with expensive paper and lots of arty pictures. The best-selling Longitude by Dava Sobel […]
Physics World is not in the habit of reviewing books by non-physicists, but when the author was married to one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century, we can make an exception. In this book, Jane Hawking – who was Stephen Hawking’s wife for 30 years – spills the beans on her life […]
The difficulties faced by women in science come brilliantly to life in this hugely enjoyable book of cartoons by Jim Ottaviani. The strips include a fascinating account of Rosalind Franklin’s scandalously undervalued role in the determination of the structure of DNA. The story tells of her battle to be taken seriously as a scientist, and […]
It was a beautiful October afternoon in 1963 when Julian Barbour’s life changed forever. He was travelling by train with a student friend to climb the Watzmann in the Bavarian Alps when he started reading an article in Scientific American by Paul Dirac. The article questioned whether it was correct to unify the concepts of […]
“I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions. So wrote Albert […]
Every morning Caroline Davidson goes into her office in west London and rifles through her “slush pile”. Like all literary agents, she hopes that buried deep within the daily deluge of book proposals and manuscripts will be something so fantastic that no potential publisher would dare turn it down. “My dream is to open a […]
