THE SCIENTISTS

   In this ambitiotis, wonderfully readable book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have transformed science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus,during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also some of the more obscure yet important names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction. The Scientists breathes new life into such venerable icons as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Linus Pauling, as well as lesser lights whose stories have been undeservedly neglected. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics, and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.