The scientists: a history of science told through the lives of its greatest inventors

Book One: Out of the dark ages. 1. Renaissance men. Emerging from the dark ; The elegance of Copernicus ; The Earth moves! ; The orbits of the planets ; Leonard Digges and the telescope ; Thomas Digges and the infinite Universe ; Bruno: a martyr for science? ; Copernican model banned by Catholic Church ; Vesalius: surgeon, dissector and grave-robber ; Fallopio and Fabricius ; William Harvey and the circulation of the blood ; 2. The last mystics. The movement of the planets ; Tycho Brahe ; Measuring star positions ; Tycho's supernova ; Tycho observes comet ; His model of the Universe ; Johannes Kepler: Tycho's assistant and inheritor ; Kepler's geometrical model of the Universe ; New thoughts on the motion of planets: Kepler's first and second laws ; Kepler's third law ; Publication of the Rudolphine star tables ; Kepler's death

3. The first scientists. William Gilbert and magnetism ; Galileo on the pendulum, gravity and acceleration ; His invention of the 'compass' ; His supernova studies ; Lippershey's reinvention of the telescope ; Galileo's developments thereon ; Copernican ideas of Galileo judged heretical ; Galileo publishes Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems ; Threatened with torture, he recants ; Galileo publishes Two New Sciences ; His death.

Book Two: The founding fathers. 4. Science finds its feet. Rene Descartes and Cartesian co-ordinates ; His greatest works ; Pierre Gassendi: atoms and molecules ; Descartes's rejection of the concept of a vacuum ; Christiaan Huygens: his work on optics and the wave theory of light ; Robert Boyle: his study of gas pressure ; Boyle's scientific approach to alchemy ; Marcello Malpighi and the circulation of the blood ; Giovanni Borelli and Edward Tyson: the increasing perception of animal (and man) as machine

5. The 'Newtonian Revolution'. Robert Hooke: the study of microscopy and the publication of Micrographia ; Hooke's study of the wave theory of light ; Hooke's law of elasticity ; John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley: cataloguing stars by telescope ; Newton's early life ; The development of calculus ; The wrangling of Hooke and Newton ; Newton's Principia Mathematica: the inverse square law and the three laws of motion ; Newton's later life ; Hooke's death and the publication of Newton's Opticks

6. Expanding horizons. Edmond Halley ; Transits of Venus ; The effort to calculate the size of an atom ; Halley travels to sea to study terrestrial magnetism ; Predicts return of comet ; Proves that stars move independently ; Death of Halley ; John Ray and Francis Willughby: the first-hand study of flora and fauna ; Carl Linnaeus and the naming of species ; The Comte de Buffon: Histoire Naturelle and thoughts on the age of the Earth ; Further thoughts on the age of the Earth: Jean Fourier and Fourier analysis ; Georges Couvier: Lectures in Comparative Anatomy; speculations on extinction ; Jean-Baptiste Lamark: thoughts on evolution.

Book Three: The Enlightenment. 7. Enlightened Science I: chemistry catches up. The Enlightenment ; Joseph Black and the discovery of carbon dioxide ; Black on temperature ; The steam engine: Thomas Newcomen, James Watt and the Industrial Revolution ; Experiments in electricity: Joseph Priestly ; Priestly's experiments with gases ; The discovery of oxygen ; The chemical studies of Henry Cavendish: publication in the Philosophical Transactions ; Water is not an element ; The Cavendish experiment: weighing the Earth ; Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: study of air; study of the system of respiration ; The first table of elements; Lavoisier renames elements; he publishes Elements of Chemisry ; Lavoisier's execution

8. Enlightened Science II: progress on all fronts. The study of electricity: Stephen Gray, Charles Du Fay, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Coulomb ; Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta and the invention of the electric battery ; Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis: the principle of least action ; Leonard Euler: mathematical description of the refraction of light ; Thomas Wright: speculations on the Milky Way ; The discoveries of William and Caroline Hershel ; John Michell ; Pierre Simon Laplace, 'The French Newton': his Exposition ; Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford): his life ; Thompson's thoughts on convection ; His thoughts on heat and motion ; James Hutton: the uniformitarian theory of geology.

Book Four: The big picture. 9. The 'Darwinian Revolution'. Charles Lyell: his life ; His travels in Europe and study of geology ; He publishes the Principles of Geology ; Lyell's thoughts on species ; Theories of evolution: Erasmus Darwin and Zoonomia ; Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: the Lamarckian theory of evolution ; Charles Darwin: his life ; The voyage of the Beagle ; Darwin develops his theory of evolution by natural selection ; Alfred Russel Wallace ; The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species

10. Atoms and molecules. Humphrey Davy's work on gases; electrochemical research ; John Dalton's atomic model; first talk of atomic weights ; Jons Berzelius and the study of elements ; Avogadro's number ; William Prout's hypothesis on atomic weights ; Friedrich Wohler: studies in organic and inorganic substances ; Valency; Stanislao Cannizzaro: the distinction between atoms and melecules ; The development of the periodic table, by Mandeleyev and others ; The science of thermodynamics ; James Joule on thermodynamics ; William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and the laws of thermodynamics ; James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann: kenetic theory and the mean free path of molecules ; Albert Einstein: Avogadro's number, Brownian motion and why the sky is blue

11. Let there be light. The wave model of light revived; Thomas Young: his double-slit experiment ; Fraunhofer lines ; The study of spectroscopy and the spectra of stars ; Michael Faraday: his studies in electromagnetism ; The invention of the electric motor and the dynamo ; Faraday on the lines of force ; Measuring the speed of light ; James Clerk Maxwell's complete theory of electromagnetism ; Light is form of electromagnetic disturbance ; Albert Michelson and Edward Morley: the Michelson-Morley experiment on light ; Albert Einstein: special theory of relativity ; Minkowski: the geometrical union of space and time in accordance with this theory

12. The last hurrah! of classical science. Contractionism: our wrinkling planet? ; Early hypotheses on continental drift ; Alfred Wegener: the father of the theory of continental drift ; The evidence for Pangea ; The radioactive technique for measuring the age of rocks ; Holmes's account of continental drift ; Geomagnetic reversals and the molten core of the Earth ; The model of 'sea-floor spreading' ; Further developments on continental drift ; The 'Bullard fit' of the continents ; Plate tectonics ; The story of Ice Ages: Jean de Charpentier ; Louis Agassiz and the glacial model ; The astronomical theory of Ice Ages ; The elliptical orbit model ; James Croll ; The Milankovitch model ; Modern ideas about Ice Ages ; The impact on evolution.

Book Five: Modern times. 13. Inner space. Invention of the vacuum tube ; 'Cathode rays' and 'canal rays' ; William Crookes: the Crookes tube and the corpuscular interpretation of cathode rays ; Cathode rays are shown to move far slower than light ; The discovery of the electron ; Wilhelm Rontgen & the discovery of X-rays ; Radioactivity ; Becquerel and the Curies ; Discovery of alpha, beta and gamma radiation ; Rutherford's model of the atom ; Radioactive decay ; The existence of isotopes ; Discovery of the neutron ; Max Planck and Planck's constant, black-body radiation and the existence of energy quanta ; Albert Einstein and light quanta ; Niels Bohr ; The first quantum model of the atom ; Louis de Broglie ; Erwin Schrodinger's wave equation for electrons ; The particle-based approach to the quantum world of electrons ; Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: wave-particle duality ; Dirac's equation of the electron ; The existence of antimatter ; The strong nuclear force ; The weak nuclear force; neutrinos ; Quantum electrodynamics ; The future? Quarks and string

14. The realm of life. The most complex things in the Universe ; Charles Darwin and nineteenth-century theories of evolution ; The role of cells in life ; The division of cells ; The discovery of chromosomes and their role in heredity ; Intracellular pangenesis ; Gregor Mendel: father of genetics ; The Mendelian laws of inheritance ; The study of chromosomes ; Nucleic acid ; Working towards DNA and RNA ; The tetranucleotide hypothesis ; The Chargaff rules ; The cemistry of life ; Covalent bond model and carbon chemistry ; The ionic bond ; Bragg's law ; Chemistry as a branch of physics ; Linus Pauling ; The nature of the hydrogen bond ; Studies of fibrous proteins ; The alpha-helix structure ; Francis Crick and James Watson: the model of the DNA double helix ; The genetic code ; The genetic age of humankind ; Humankind is nothing special

15. Outer space. Measuring the distances of stars ; Stellar parallax determinations ; Spectroscopy and the stuff of stars ; The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram ; The colour-magnitude relationship and the distances to stars ; The Cepheid distance scale ; Cepheid stars and the distances to other galaxies ; General theory of relativity outlined ; The expanding Universe ; The steady state model of the Universe ; The nature of the Big Bang ; Predicting background radiation ; Measuring background radiation ; Modern measurements: the COBE satellite ; How the stars shine: the nuclear fusion process ; The concept of 'resonances' ; CHON and humankind's place in the Universe ; Into the unknown.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Out of the dark ages

Renaissance men ; Last mystics ; First scientists

2. Founding fathers

Science finds its feet ; Newtonian revolution ; Expanding horizons

3. Enlightenment

Enlightened science I : chemistry catches up ; Enlightened science II : progress on all fronts

4. Big picture

Darwinian revolution ; Atoms and molecules ; Let there be light ; Last hurrah! of classical science

5. Modern times

Inner space ; Realm of life ; Outer space

Coda : Pleasure of finding things out.