I’ve been fascinated by science since I was a small child. I used to try to drag my parents up to London’s Natural History Museum to gawk at dinosaurs every other Sunday and remember the delight of seeing Saturn and its rings through a telescope from our back garden. I started reading popular science books as a teenager and they were a large part of what inspired me to ultimately become a physicist. I hope the books on this list will bring a bit of awe and wonder into your life!
I wrote...
Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. Particles with unbelievable energies are bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice. Unknown forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter. Stars are flying away from us far faster than anyone can explain.
In Space Oddities, Harry Cliff provides a riveting look at the universe’s most confounding puzzles. In a journey that spans continents, he meets the scientists hunting for answers and asks: Are these anomalies accidents of nature, or could they be pointing us toward vast, hidden worlds?
I first read The Magic Furnace when I was a teenager thinking about what to study at university, and it left a deep impression on me. It tells the story of the search for the origin of atoms, tracing their origins from the lab out into space.
The way the narrative weaves the work of many scientists working over multiple generations as they piece together this amazing cosmic story is really inspiring.
"Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns." Thus begins The Magic Furnace, an eloquent, extraordinary account of how scientists unraveled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life itself. The historic search for atoms and their stellar origins is truly one of the greatest detective stories of science. In effect, it offers two epics intertwined: the birth of atoms in the Big Bang and the evolution of stars and how…
I didn’t so much read this book as inhale it. Rovelli’s writing is always highly readable, and this one is no exception. The book tells the dramatic story of the origin of quantum mechanics, beginning with a holiday spent on the windswept island of Helgoland by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s.
Rovelli introduces the history of the core ideas of quantum mechanics with great clarity and provides an interesting new way of interpreting quantum weirdness that I found fascinating.
Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian
“Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman
“One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal
A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander.
This is a thrilling book that tells the story of the quest to split the atom in the 1920s and 30s at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.
I love the way Cathcart brings historic characters like Ernest Rutherford to life on the page, and really gets across the excitement of a period where physicists were making incredibly rapid progress in understanding the deepest workings of nature.
"Cathcart tells this exhilarating story with both verve and precision" --The Sunday Telegraph
Re-creating the frustrations, excitements, and obsessions of 1932, the "miracle year" of British physics, Brian Cathcart reveals in rich detail the astonishing story behind the splitting of the atom. The most celebrated scientific experiment of its time, it would lead to one of mankind's most devastating inventions--the atomic bomb.
All matter is made mostly of empty space. Each of the billions of atoms that comprise it is hollow, its true mass concentrated in a tiny nucleus that, if the atom were a cathedral, would be no bigger…
This beautiful little book explores the loftiest goal of all of physics, the search for a complete theory of the fundamental workings of nature. Weinberg was not only a Nobel Prize winning physicist, but an incredible, lyrical writer.
Written at the start of the 1990s, the book still remains relevant today, as physicists are still struggling towards a more complete description of the universe.
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist and bestselling author of The First Three Minutes describes the grand quest for a unifying theory of nature--one that can explain forces as different as the cohesion inside the atom and the gravitational tug between the sun and Earth. Wirting with dazzling elegance and clarity, he retraces the steps that have led modern scientists from relativity and quantum mechanics to the notion of super-strings and the idea that our universe may coexist with others.
But Weinberg asks as many questions as he answers, among them: Why does each explanation of the way nature works point to…
I’ve always loved Bill Bryson’s travel writing, and in his later foray into popular science he remains a funny and curious guide to everything from the origins of the universe, to the inner workings of planet Earth. The way he weaves together subjects as diverse (and challenging) as evolution by natural selection and quantum mechanics is an incredible achievement.
The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century and has sold over 2 million copies.
'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to…
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives…
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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