“I often said before starting, that I had no doubt I should frequently repent of the whole undertaking.” So wrote Charles Darwin aboard The Beagle, bound for the Galapagos Islands and what would argua
The spectacular structures of today, such as large suspension bridges, are the result of scientific principles established during the new iron age of the nineteenth century. The book is concerned with a detailed and critical account of the development and application of those principles (including statics and elasticity) by people of remarkable talent in applied mathematics and engineering. They were, of course, mainly motivated by the demands of the railway, construction boom. Among the outstanding examples chosen by the author is Robert Stephenson's use of novel principles for the design and erection of the Britannia tubular iron bridge over the Menai Straits. A History of the Theory of Structures in the Nineteenth Century is a uniquely comprehensive account of a century of the development of the theory; an account which skilfully blends the personalities and the great works and which is enlivened by little-known accounts of friendship and controversy.
Now a Major Motion Picture Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and remarkable scientists of our age, and author of the scientific bestseller A Brief History of Time, which sold over 25
This remarkable reference book tells the story of science from earliest times to the present day, taking in everything from ancient Greek geometry to quantum physics, and the wedge to the worldwide web. Exploring science in a thematic, highly approachable manner, each spread takes as its theme a specific event, discovery, invention, experiment, theory, or individual and explains why this subject was so significant in the development of scientific thought and what its impact on history has been. In addition to providing a broad-ranging and comprehensive history of science, the book also explains how science works, employing DK's trademark clarity and visual ingenuity to render tricky scientific subjects easily comprehensible. Science is structured chronologically with five chapters covering major phases in world history from ancient times to the present day, with an eye to the future. Within these chapters, subjects are arranged in discrete spreads, each of which takes a key scientific
Professor Herman Bondi, one of the proponents of the Steady State Theory, presented this volume as an account that would establish cosmology as a distinct branch of physics. First published in 1952, just a few years after the term 'the Big Bang' was coined, it represents an important stage in the development of cosmology. With detailed discussions of different theories including Newtonian cosmology, relativistic cosmology and kinematic relativity, it gives a remarkable insight into scientific thought at this crucial time. It will be most useful to anyone with an interest in the history of science or the progression of scientific ideas.
