‘twelve scientists who, in the last two thousand five hundred years changed the world both as we perceive it and as we live in it’ p.1
‘individual can typify as well as exemplify a sudden breakthrough in thought’ p.1
‘single figure can allow the context… to be brought to bear’ p.1
‘Faraday apparently stumbling into science’ p.2
‘heroic Marie Curie… with little but the determination and brilliance’ p.2
‘Newton… a force of invention all subsequent scientists look on with awe’ p.2
‘Galileo… successful bringer of new worlds and unsuccessful intriguer in old ones’p.2
‘thought of by some to be the first mathematician and physicist, Archimedes’ p.2
‘makers of discoveries which changed the world’
‘involvements of scientists who are alive now is fundamental’ p.3
‘get to the heart of Darwin’s achievement rapidly, accurately and reliably’ p.3
‘described surely and succinctly’
‘comment on the context’
‘bring Darwin and his ideas into the 1990s and show how they have developed and been developed since Darwin’s day’ p.3
‘asking simple but… central questions, the essentials are described and the main points made’
‘contributors carry such authority’ p.3
‘learning about science, for me, had the effect of transforming the world’ p.6
‘seeks to reach out to the deep past of science and also pin it to the present day’ p.8
‘giants are as clear as pylons… supported by them… are many current scientists… supported by them is the non-scientist’ p.9
‘I have only seen so far because I have been standing on the shoulders of other giants’ Newton p.13
‘if the discovery of science had not happened in Greece, would it not have happened at all?’
‘I believe so’ Lewis Wolpert p.16
‘Look, without Archimedes I could have achieved nothing’ Wolpert on Galileo p.23
‘there are thing changing in science and that is the essence, that things can change… I tis painful, but you have got to change; but some of the key ideas remain for ever’ Wolpert p.32
‘someone like Faraday or Darwin, they change the way we think about the world and you can either do this is dribs and drabs or someone could have this astonishing insight’ Wolpert p.33
Invention of telescope by Hans Lippershay ? Galileo, 46, improved instrument and turned to stars ? discovers satellite of Jupiter p.57
‘Principia Mathematica… perhaps the single most important book in the history of science’ p.85
‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’’ Newton p.95
‘science has evolved and still does… we only see in retrospect the ideas that proved fruitful’ Sir Martin Rees p.96
‘He drew the distinction between elements and compounds, so that people understood the way that the world was built much more clearly’ Peter Atkins p.107
‘overturned the theory of phlogiston’ p.108
‘really the executioner of alchemy’ Atkins p.110
‘properly regarded as the father of chemistry’ Atkins p.111
‘Oxygen gas, according to Lavoisier, is a compound of two elements… oxygen, which is the principle of acidity, and caloric, which is the principle of heat’ Simon Schaffer p.114
‘the one who named oxygen, but he was not its discoverer. Lavoisier discovered nothing, in fact, in chemistry’ (contrary to popular opinion) Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent p.115
‘he was undoubtedly a revolutionary scientist’ p.119
‘The revolution does not need scientists’ a judge p.121
‘his death is still a matter of great embarrassment to the French’ p.121
‘only two years after his execution Lavoisier became a hero’ p.122
‘it is very rewarding to see the evolution of ideas that has gone on… then watch later on their final flowering’ Atkins p.123
‘theoretical work radically challenged the ideas of physicists who preceded him’ p.130
‘sudden shifting of the perspective of knowledge that is so thrilling in science’ p.130
‘ a man who radically changed a way of looking at the world’ p.130
‘man who changed the world’ p.130
book binder, left school at 13 ? given tickets to listen to Sir Humphry Davy ? wrote up the lectures, bound them and sent them to Davy - John Meurig Thomas p.131
‘first to show that a magnetic field could produce a current… most science dictionaries credit him with the invention of a primitice electric motor’ p.134
‘the word ‘scientist’ was not coined until the 1830s’ p.136
‘magnitude of his discoveries’ Thomas p.139
‘he liquified aout twenty different gases. Referigeration becomes possible as a result’ Thomas p.139
‘his laws of electrolysis changed the nature of industry and manufacture’ Thomas p.139
‘series of experiments… transformed the picture of experimental science’ Thomas p.140
‘his biggest impact theoretically, which we are still feeling… he worked out an idea which was absolutely right but nobody had though about before then: the nation of the field’ Thomas p. 140
‘has given rise to electronics – the fax machine, telephone, television… they all go back to Faraday’s understanding… they all go back step by step to Faraday’ Thomas p.141
‘Faraday’s ideas inspired his own century and ours’ p.144
‘He is a massively important figure. Without Faraday… we would not have the kinds of theories… which lead on in a variety of ways to rather a large chunk of twentieth-century physics.’ Iwan Morus p. 144
‘despite adverts now to the contrary. Faraday did not invent the electric motor… the electric light bulb… Faraday himself would have been most horrified… at the imputation that he was a mere inventor’ Morus p. 145
‘rise from poor and intially ill-educated background to be one of the greatest scientists ever’ p. 145
‘only those best adapted through sheer good fortune survived’ p. 160
‘simply theory… many people… reject what they think are its awful consequences’ p. 160
‘Darwin’s work has… become even more important than it was a hundred years ago’ p. 160
‘single best idea anybody ever had.. to Darwin’ Daniel Dennett p.160
‘his achievement was tremendous’ Richard Dawkins p. 161
‘with hindsight seems enourmously simple’ Dawkins p. 161
‘basically spent his years at Cambridge gambling with his healthy friends’ Stephen Jay Gould p. 162
‘He abandoned plans made for him first to become a doctor… then to be a cleryman’ p. 163
‘Perhaps he would have continued in this rather aimless way were it not for an opportunity which he seized’ p.163
‘his famous voyage almost failed to happen – what a world might have changed there’ p.163
‘he had to face a disapproving father’ p. 163
‘Darwin was not to be put off’ p. 164
‘he took advantage of every opportunity to visit the strange new lands where the ship docked’ p. 164
‘Hindsight is a great gift’ p. 166
‘In the one short swoop he had gathered everything for a whole lifetime of thought’ p. 167
‘had to overcome the fear… he was demoting all that they held dear’ Dennett p. 172
‘people still do not accept Darwin’s theory a hundred and fifty years after he first formulated it’ p. 178
‘many people are very reluctant to accept the implications of natural selection’ John Maynard Smith p. 178
‘They do not like it’ Smith p. 179
‘human creativity… can all be explained by Darwin’s theory of natural selection’ opinion of Darwinists, p. 179
‘figure of anormous importance’ p. 188
‘inspired the arts from computerised pictures to the perculiar sounf of fractal music’ p. 187
‘Poincaré single-handedly… got at least two… major branches of present day mathematics going from almost nothing…’ Ian Stewart p. 191
‘without topology nowadays, mathematics could not function’ Stewart p. 191
‘he invented ‘dynamical systems’… this was a really radical idea… it led to… chaos theory’ Stewart p.191-2
‘bodies move to all intents and purposes in a way that looks random… not really random… But it looks as if it has got no structure’ Stewart p. 194
‘Chaos is when any deterministic system… has a solution that is so complex and so irregular that it appears to be random unless you know a lot of hidden information about what it is doing’ Stewart p. 194
‘nobody, including Poincaré, recognised that this was the tip of a huge iceberg of very, very interesting, mathematical questions and answers’ Stewart p. 195
‘He has not actually solved the problem but he has… created… a whole new way of thinking’ Stewart p. 195
‘Poincaré’s work completely alters the way we see the world’ p. 195
‘Chaos overturns that simple view of the world… some of the simplest rules you can imagine… can give you behaviour that is as random and complicated as anything you can imagine’ Sir Robert May p. 196
‘applying chaos theory to biological systems’ p. 196
‘its sensitivity to minute changes make it very difficult if not impossible to make predictions’ p. 197
‘impossible to predict more than somewhere between ten and thirty days ahead… because they have chaotic behaviour and the sensitivity to initial conditions makes it impossible’ p. 198
‘It is apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that actually has a simple explanation’ p. 199
‘simple rules do not have simple consequences’ May p. 199
‘the simplest rules you can imagine with nothing random in them, can behave in so complicated a way that they do not have a predictable outcome’ p. 200
‘chaos theory, is philosophically and politically liberating’ Stewart p. 201
‘Since the French revolution science and scientists have been considered as really important’ Michael Paty p. 209
‘I think the controversies have changed over time… I think by now a hundred years later, the scandal is different… we now have more of a sense of the context’ Adam Phillips p. 215
‘Freud’s revolutionary theories about the unconscious have… influenced every aspect of our lives in the twentieth century’ p. 216
‘little to suggest in Freud’s background that this would be the case’ p. 216
‘he had what was then a traditional, middle-class, Jewish upbringing’ p. 217
‘on encounter with… Jean Martin Charcot… proved to be a turning point in Freud’s career’ p. 217
‘Freud abandoned neurology, which has always been regarded as a crucial breakpoint in his career’ p. 223
‘there is within us a very primal, basic, sensational desire for a sensation which I would call pleasure and he would call sex… so simple it does not entail individuality’ Susan Greenfield p. 226
‘such a theory remains controversial even today, but it outraged society at the turn of the century’ p. 229
‘Throughout his life, despite his steadily growing reputation, Freud had to fight constantly to have his ideas accepted’ p. 230
‘This is still a battleground’ on whether psychoanalysis is scientific p. 232
‘The feeling of triumph on being liberated is too strongly mixed with sorrow for, in spite of everything, I still greatly loved the prison from which I have been released. The enchantment of the new surroundings… is blended with discontent caused by little peculiarities of the strange environment’ Freud to Max Eitingdon on fleeing Vienna in 1938 p. 235
‘Freud, who fought so hard to gain the respect of scientists in his day, is now being taken seriously by a group of neuroscientists’ p. 235
‘he was a pioneer… that thinks originally and has original ideas’ Susan Greenfield p. 236
‘Scientists especially tend to forget that they stand on the shoulders of giants. They laugh at people in the past who had misguided views… It is so easy to deride seemingly simple-minded ideas of the past… Freud nowadays is not popular among neuroscientists’ Greenfield p. 236
‘one of just a handful of women studying chemistry’ p.245
‘she grew up with this kind of fiestiness and feeling of resisting the status quo’ Susan Quinn p.246
‘Paris… very much dominated – particularly the university – by the male authorities where she was definitely in a minority’ Quinn p.246
‘no place to go in Poland because university was not open to omen’ p. 247
‘really highly unusual behaviour for a young woman of that time’ Quinn p. 247
‘She was twenty-three; she was living alone… this was just not done. So she was unusual’ Quinn p. 247
‘Polish positivism… through learning, through science, we can overcome oppression’ Quinn p. 248
‘All that I saw and learned that was new delighted me, it was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know’ Marie Curie p. 249
‘One of only two hundred and ten women amongst nine thousand men’ p. 249
‘Marie Curie’s astounding achievements were part of what began to change that rigid and debarring stereotype’ p. 249
‘Because a woman must not think and a thinker must not be a woman!’ Françoise Balibar
‘he lightened some of her seriousness, helped her to play, to love nature, to have fun’ Quinn p. 251
‘She was astounded… and did not believe her results at first’ Quinn p. 254
‘really opened the door of the nuclear age’ Quinn p. 254 ? J.J. Thomson, Rutherford
‘gives us a whole idea of modern versions of radioactivity and eventually atomic fission and so on… paved the way for other researchers’ Dr John Gribbin p. 256
‘It is by firing particles at unstable atoms that you make the nuclei split apart and you cause fission’ p. 257
‘With hindsight you could say that Marie Curie was almost the mother of the atomic bomb’ p. 257
‘It was through that beginning… that really most of twentieth century physics develops’ p. 257
‘They complained a lot about the way in which it changed their life… But as a result… Pierre was admitted to the Académie des Sciences… got funds for their laboratory’ p. 258
‘it seemed difficult for anyone at the time to acknowledge her true part in the discovery’ p. 259
‘It was a devastating event… She stopped working… She became depressed’ Quinn p. 261-2
‘scientific progress meant a move towards an ever-improving world’ p.265-6
‘the Curies’ work opens the way for nuclear physics… It was something that was going to happen if they had not done it’ Gribbin p. 267
‘medical side is probably the biggest influence… certainly on everyday life in the twentieth century’ Gribbin p. 267
‘Marie Curie was a very important scientist… Perhaps now… we are starting to see a real balance… She was a really good scientist, but not of the very first rank’ Gribbin p. 270
‘A characteristic of major scientific discovery seems to be that the significance of the work can often change, and radically, as time goes on’ p. 270
‘Darwin… his work is becoming increasingly important’ p. 270-1
‘one of those theories which might not have been arrived at by anyone else’ Professor Sir Roger Penrose p. 275
‘Einstein began by rejecting the notion of the ether’ p. 278
‘leads on to nuclear power and nuclear bombs’ Paul Davies p. 280
‘Einstein’s general theory of relativity does not have much impact on our everyday lives, yet it seems to have completely changed the way we look at the universe’ p. 281
‘mainly a change in outlook. It is not as though it has directly influenced our lives’ John Gribbin p. 282
‘in the first place you will not succeed and, even if you succeed, no one will believe you’ Max Plank to Einstein p. 282
three attempts at divorcing Mileva, p. 286
‘Einstein left Germany and the Nazis behind for America’ p.288
‘He later urged the United States to develop the atom bomb before Germany’ p. 288
‘If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker’ p. 288
‘It has undoubtedly got intellectual consequences’ Jocelyn Bell Burnell p. 289
‘a completely different way of looking at gravity’ Penrose p. 292
‘I cannot believe God plays dice with the universe’ Gribbin quoting Einstein p. 294
‘they get old and set in their ways.. they cannot accept new ideas’ Gribbin p. 294
‘Physicists seem to be predicting enormous changes in the way we understand the universe’ p. 295-6
‘once that theory comes, it will have major implications… I think there will be a major revolution coming’ Penrose p. 296-7
‘Scientists today are still searching in the same way that Einstein did for answers to the questions that he first posed’ p. 298
‘Newton thought h had it all wrapped up and then Einstein came along and showed that was all wrong. Someone will come along and show Einstein is all wrong’ Paul Davies on other people’s thoughts p. 298
‘I am sure that in the fullness of time we will find another theory which will incorporate Einstein’s theory of relativity… I like to believe that out there… is the correct theory… and that we are moving towards that successive approximations’ Davies p. 198-9
‘the greatest scientific even of the twentieth century’ description by Peter Medawar p. 303
‘I suspect we will be making a slight dent into the manner in which DNA can reproduce itself. I prefer this type of model over Pauling’s’ James Watson to Max Delbrück p. 303
‘a good candidate for the greatest discovery of the century’ Richard Dawkins p. 304
‘Crick and Watson achieved a revolution in biology with their discovery of the double helical structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), providing the broad answer to the question of how genes replicate and carry information, and effectively beginning the whole new science of ‘molecular biology’’ p. 304
‘Science… its steps forward (and backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles’ Watson in Double Helix p. 304
‘Francis Crick was born… into a middle-class family… he had… a stroke of luck’ p. 305-6
‘James Watson… Early on he wanted to find out what a gene was… at the time of the breakthrough, he was still only twenty-five’ p. 306
‘It was not until the early years of this century, when Mendel’s theories were developed and combined with those of the great evolutionist Darwin, that their full significance was grasped’ p. 306
‘His work on the structure of ‘biomolecules’ and on hydrogen bonding formed the basis of Crick and Watson’s world of DNA’ on Pauling p. 307
‘we were both boat-rockers… we never went along for consensus’ Watson p. 313
‘Crick and Watson’s discovery has revolutionised biology over the last forty-five years… In less than half a century, medicine has made great strides forward… There have been benefits in other spheres too’ p. 315
‘supreme revolution in our view of life’ Dawkins p. 318
‘we now understand why acquired character are not inherited’ p. 319
‘it is not the knowledge that people are frightened of but what use that knowledge might be put to’ John Maynard Smith p. 320
‘I guess… yes, but I would hope otherwise. It would change the way people reproduce’ Watson p. 322
‘I find it hard to actually think of benefits of cloning’ p. 323
‘I guess we were standing on the shoulders of Lawrence Bragg and Linus Pauling’ Watson p. 324
‘sciences is an everyday operation performed not by geniuses but by ordinary mortals and punctuated more often by long periods of inactivity than by moments of earth-shattering inspiration’ p. 325
‘the moment of conception is often brief’ Crick p. 325
‘I just like to know why things happen and I think that is probably something we have inherited. Curiosity about things’ Watson p. 327
‘a frontier that will exist for ever, in my opinion, which is to understand the complexities evolved in our universe’ Sir Martin Rees p. 332
‘Trying to predict the future is a mug’s game’ John Maynard Smith p. 332
‘Homo sapiens will never stop seeking to find out what he does not know’ p. 333
‘Our subjects stand… on the shoulders of giants before them’ p.333
‘Where once most people looked to faith for comfort, today many optimistically expect the next generation of scientists to add to the knowledge we already have and improve on it. They have faith that the future will only be better. That is only one view’ p. 333
‘No brilliant insight has gone unchallenged’ p. 333-4
‘science will continue, but its glory days are over’ John Horgan p. 335
‘one can equally argue that science is just the beginning’ Sir John Maddox p. 335
‘A century ago was one of the great triumphalist periods in science… it seemed that science was set for contentment… But look what happened. Within five years the subject of physics had been turned upside down… there has been such a revolutionary period in science’ Maddox p. 337
‘the origins of the marvellous revolution that we had at the beginning of this century were to be found in the contentment of the nineteenth century’ p. 338
argument among scientist about whether there is anything left to discover in science – gap in knowledge is about the human mind, how it works – maybe more philosophical than scientific
‘Igor Aleksander is optimistic that forty years from now… we will have artificially conscious machines. I am not sure I welcome that moment’ p. 351
‘Theory of Everything’ p. 355
‘it was easier in the old days for people to seem giants because the universe was so badly known and explored’ p. 357-8
‘Scientists seek truth through knowledge and progress comes through success in this ‘marvellous enterprise’’ p. 360