Great Physicists by William Cropper, Oxford University Press, 拢24.95/$35, ISBN 0195137485
FAMOUS physicists are famously overexposed in print. So Great Physicists鈥攁 500-page tome packed with short biographies鈥攃ould produce a groaning comment like that in the film Casablanca: 鈥淩ound up the usual suspects.鈥� Certainly here are the usual suspects (with mugshots): Einstein, Newton, Faraday, Planck, Bohr and their ilk, and many others who are less well known but also undeniably great.
William Cropper鈥檚 collection is excellent. Its sweep is vast, ranging from Galileo to Hawking. It鈥檚 well written. The biographies are organised into sections, by scientific discipline, and each section is headed by a short history of its development up to modern times.
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This is a winning formula. You can follow the progress of research and discovery, and enhance any part that interests you by delving into the work of the discoverers. And Cropper has not omitted the splendours and miseries of their lives outside the lab. It鈥檚 a bonus that a lmost all of them are eccentrics.
Where he thinks it necessary, Cropper includes the relevant mathematics. This is easy to skip and if you do, nothing is lost from the close-packed enjoyment on offer.
The cumulative effect of reading this book is that however you tackle it, you are bound to appreciate the flow of science, how one advance leads to others like a great incoming tide.