The Great Scientists

Skyscrapers, jet aircraft, mobile phones, computers - the visible products of science are everywhere. But perhaps its most significant achievement is something less tangible: the scientific method itself. This book profiles the men and women who have shaped that method, individuals who excelled within their own fields and, in several cases, effectively founded entire disciplines of their own. Their path was rarely smooth. Skepticism, mockery and worse often greeted those who challenged accepted truths, yet they persisted, leaving behind an example that still resonates. Bertrand Russell once described such figures as burning "with all the noonday brightness of human genius" - and it is that brightness this collection sets out to capture.