Science, with its inherent tension between the known and the unknown, is an inexhaustible mine of great stories. Collected here are twenty-six among the most enchanting tales, one for each letter of the alphabet: the main characters are scientists of the highest caliber most of whom, however, are unknown to the general public.
This book goes from A to Z. The letter A stands for Abel, the great Norwegian mathematician, here involved in an elliptic thriller about a fundamental theorem of mathematics, while the letter Z refers to Absolute Zero, the ultimate and lowest temperature limit, - 273,15 degrees Celsius, a value that is tremendously cooler than the most remote corner of the Universe: the race to reach this final outpost of coldness is not yet complete, but, similarly to the history books of polar explorations at the beginning of the 20th century, its pages record successes, failures, fierce rivalries and tragic desperations. In between the A and the Z, the other letters of the alphabet are similar to the various stages of a very fascinating journey along the paths of science, a journey in the company of a very unique set of characters as eccentric and peculiar as those in __Ulysses__ by James Joyce: the French astronomer who lost everything, even his mind, to chase the transits of Venus; the caustic Austrian scientist who, perfectly at ease with both the laws of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics, revealed the hidden secrets of dreams and the periodic table of chemical elements; the young Indian astrophysicist who was the first to understand how a star dies, suffering the ferocious opposition of his mentor for this discovery. Or the Hungarian physicist who struggled with his melancholy in the shadows of the desert of Los Alamos; or the French scholar who was forced to hide her femininity behind a false identity so as to publish fundamental theorems on prime numbers. And so on and so forth.
Twenty-six stories, which reveal the most authentic atmosphere of science and the lives of some of its main players: each story can be read in quite a short period of time -- basically the time it takes to get on and off the train between two metro stations. Largely independent from one another, these twenty-six stories make the book a harmonious polyphony of several voices: the reader can invent his/her own very personal order for the chapters simply by ordering the sequence of letters differently. For an elementary law of Mathematics, this can give rise to an astronomically large number of possible books -- all the same, but - then again - all different. This book is therefore the ideal companion for an infinite number of real or metaphoric journeys.

nexusstc/The ABC’s of Science/9361b49027c39b93c25582793186f640.pdf

lgli/10.1007%2F978-3-030-55169-8.pdf

lgrsnf/10.1007%2F978-3-030-55169-8.pdf

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zlib/Mathematics/Giuseppe Mussardo/The ABC’s of Science_11250285.pdf

481183_1_En_Print.indd

Mussardo, Giuseppe

0014813

Springer International Publishing AG

Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland, 2020

Cham (Switzerland), cop. 2020

1st ed. 2020, 2020-11-06

Switzerland, Switzerland

sm84586809

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 10.1.16 (Windows)

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Preface 5
Contents 7
Abel. An Elliptic Thriller 9
On the Streets of Paris 10
An Enfant Prodige 14
Priority Issues 15
Further Readings 18
Boltzmann. The Genius of Disorder 19
The Power of Poetry 20
Like a Karst River 20
The Restlessness of a Viennese Physicist 23
A Science with Many Fathers but Few Principles 25
The Mathematical Law of Chance: Probability 26
Different Visions of the World 27
Further Readings 27
Chandra. The Journey of a Star 28
The Legend of Ramanujan 29
Indian Science 31
The Meeting with Quantum Physicists 31
The Fate of a Star 33
A Surprising Conclusion 33
Oxbridge 34
Trinity Fellow 35
That Afternoon at the Royal Astronomical Society 36
Further Readings 37
Dirac. Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty 38
An Oppressive Father 38
The Laws of Chances 39
Anti-matter 44
Further Readings 45
Erdös. The Wandering Mathematician 46
Central European Atmospheres 46
The Great Book 47
The Man Who Came in from the Cold 49
Birds and Frogs 50
Another Roof, Another Proof 51
It Happened at Princeton 52
Further Readings 55
Faraday. An Electric Discovery 56
Friday Evening at the Royal Institution 56
A Dickens Character 57
The Riebau Bookshop 59
Electricity and Chemistry 60
Public Lessons 61
A Lucky Encounter 61
“In the Future, You Will Put a Tax on It” 62
A Choice of Field 63
Further Readings 64
Germain. Sophie’s Choice 65
Monsieur LeBlanc 65
The Tragic End of Archimedes 66
The Forbidden Texts of the Great Mathematicians 66
A Mysterious Pupil 68
Give the Numbers 70
Correspondence with the Prince of Mathematicians 71
Further Readings 73
Harriot. Down the Spiral 74
In Elizabethan London 74
In the Service of Sir Raleigh 75
In the Tower of London 79
A Versatile Scientist 81
Further Readings 82
Ising. A Magnetic Modesty 83
When Nature Changes Mood 83
The Success of a Model 84
The Story of a Model 84
At the Mercy of History 87
On the Run to the United States 88
A Lesson in Great Honesty 89
Further Reading 89
Joliot-Curie. The Dream of the Alchemist 90
Glory and Tragedy 91
A Lucky Encounter 95
The Transmutation of Things 97
Further Readings 99
Kepler. Cannonballs and Honeycomb Cells 100
The Astrologer Astronomer 101
Harmonices Mundi 101
The Dane with a Golden Nose 103
Magic Prague 105
A Trial for Witchcraft 106
A Famous Geometric Conjecture 106
Nature of Mathematical Proofs 108
Landau. The Ten Commandments 109
Le Rouge Et Le Noir 109
The Mecca of Physics 112
Be Careful, He Bites! 114
Lubyanka’s Guest 115
The Classification of Physicists 117
Further Reading 119
Maxwell. Fiat Lux 120
The Mysteries of Electricity and Magnetism 120
A Cultivated Country Gentleman 121
A Place Called Glenlair 123
The Fingers, The Head and The Heart 124
The Calculation of Probabilities 125
Maxwell’s Demon 125
A Field of Forces 126
A Scientific Masterpiece 127
Further Readings 129
Nucleus. My Name Is Lise Meitner 130
The Diamond Ring 130
The Wonder of the Old Professor 131
Track 12 135
A Train Headed to Holland 136
Further Reading 138
Oppenheimer. An Explosive Plan 139
Dr. Strangelove 139
A Man, An Enigma 140
A Dedicated Anti-communist 144
Professor at Berkeley 145
The Atomic Era 146
A Sham Trial 147
Further Reading 148
Pauli. An Odd Couple 149
Black and White 150
Two Brilliant Intuitions 153
A Trunk Full of People 154
The Hardened Scientific Rationalist and the Alienist 155
Like Two Communicating Vessels 156
Further Reading 157
Quantum. Erwin’s Version 158
The Theater of the World 159
A Wave in Search of an Equation 162
Two Different Visions of the World 164
Further Readings 166
Rasetti. From Atomic Nuclei to Cambrian Trilobites 167
The Pisa years 167
Spectroscopy of a Friendship 170
A Famous Photo 172
The Great Refusal 175
Further Reading 176
Spallanzani. Priest Jokes 177
A Priest Sui Generis 177
A Head Problem and a Stomach Problem 180
The Spallanzani Affair 181
See with Your Ears 183
Further Reading 184
Touschek. The Lord of the Rings 185
In the Tiger’s Mouth 185
The Prison Full of Bats 186
The Return to Rome 189
AdA 191
Further Reading 192
Ulam. The Art of Simulation 193
A Desert Full of History 193
“S. Ulam, Astronomer, Physicist and Mathematician” 194
The Scottish Café 196
The Art of Computation 197
The Power of the Calculator 198
Further Readings 200
Venus. The Cruel Goddess 201
Solar Walkways 201
The Astronomical Unit 202
The Winds of Sea and the Winds of War 206
From Bad to Worse 207
The Mockery 208
Further Reading 209
Weil. The Brahmin of Mathematics 210
In the Heart of Paris 211
The First Theorems 213
An Unstoppable Desire to Travel 214
Bourbaki, Academician from Poldevia 216
The Queen of Math 217
Further Readings 218
X-Rays. Seeing the Invisible 219
The Mystery of the Tubes 219
The Discovery of the Electron 222
An Important Bearded Man 223
That Damned Radiation from that Damned Tube 224
The First Nobel Prize in History 225
Further Readings 226
Yang-Lee. The Puzzle of the Mirror 227
Chinese Fairy Tales 227
A Zoo of Particles 227
Two Chinese in America 231
The Puzzle of the Mirror 233
Further Reading 235
Zero. Someone Likes Cold 236
The Conquest of the Poles 236
James Dewar, the Cold Wizard 237
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Knowledge Through Measurement 241
Arrival and Departure Points 243
Further Reading 243

"Science, with its inherent tension between the known and the unknown, is an inexhaustible mine of great stories. Collected here are twenty-six among the most enchanting tales, one for each letter of the alphabet: the main characters are scientists of the highest caliber most of whom, however, are unknown to the general public. This book goes from A to Z. The letter A stands for Abel, the great Norwegian mathematician, here involved in an elliptic thriller about a fundamental theorem of mathematics, while the letter Z refers to Absolute Zero, the ultimate and lowest temperature limit, - 273,15 degrees Celsius, a value that is tremendously cooler than the most remote corner of the Universe: the race to reach this final outpost of coldness is not yet complete, but, similarly to the history books of polar explorations at the beginning of the 20th century, its pages record successes, failures, fierce rivalries and tragic desperations. In between the A and the Z, the other letters of the alphabet are similar to the various stages of a very fascinating journey along the paths of science, a journey in the company of a very unique set of characters as eccentric and peculiar as those in Ulysses by James Joyce: the French astronomer who lost everything, even his mind, to chase the transits of Venus; the caustic Austrian scientist who, perfectly at ease with both the laws of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics, revealed the hidden secrets of dreams and the periodic table of chemical elements; the young Indian astrophysicist who was the first to understand how a star dies, suffering the ferocious opposition of his mentor for this discovery. Or the Hungarian physicist who struggled with his melancholy in the shadows of the desert of Los Alamos; or the French scholar who was forced to hide her femininity behind a false identity so as to publish fundamental theorems on prime numbers. And so on and so forth. Twenty-six stories, which reveal the most authentic atmosphere of science and the lives of some of its main players: each story can be read in quite a short period of time -- basically the time it takes to get on and off the train between two metro stations. Largely independent from one another, these twenty-six stories make the book a harmonious polyphony of several voices: the reader can invent his/her own very personal order for the chapters simply by ordering the sequence of letters differently. For an elementary law of Mathematics, this can give rise to an astronomically large number of possible books -- all the same, but - then again - all different. This book is therefore the ideal companion for an infinite number of real or metaphoric journeys"--Publisher's website

Science, with its inherent tension between the known and the unknown, is an inexhaustible mine of great stories. Collected here are twenty-six among the most enchanting tales, one for each letter of the alphabet: the main characters are scientists of the highest calibre mostly of whom, however, are unknown to the general public. This book goes from A to Z. The letter A stands for Abel, the great Norwegian mathematician, here involved in an elliptic thriller about a fundamental theorem of mathematics, while the letter Z refers to Absolute Zero, the ultimate and lowest temperature limit, - 273,15 degrees Celsius, a value that is tremendously cooler than the most remote corner of the Universe: the race to reach this final outpost of coldness is not yet complete, but, similarly to the history books of polar explorations at the beginning of the 20th century, its pages record successes, failures, fierce rivalries and tragic desperations. In between the A and the Z, the other letters of the alphabet are similar to the various stages of a very fascinating journey along the paths of science, a journey in the company of a very unique set of characters as eccentric and peculiar as those in Ulysses by James Joyce: the French astronomer who lost everything, even his mind, to chase the transits of Venus; the caustic Austrian scientist who, perfectly at ease with both the laws of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics, revealed the hidden secrets of dreams and the periodic table of chemical elements; the young Indian astrophysicist who was the first to understand how a star dies, suffering the ferocious opposition of his mentor for this discovery. Or the Hungarian physicist who struggled with his melancholy in the shadows of the desert of Los Alamos; or the French scholar who was forced to hide her femininity behind a false identity so as to publish fundamental theorems on prime numbers. And so on and so forth. Twenty-six stories, which reveal the most authentic atmosphere of science and the lives of some of its main players: each story can be read in quite a short period of time -- basically the time it takes to get on and off the train between two metro stations. Largely independent from one another, these twenty-six stories make the book a harmonious polyphony of several voices: the reader can invent his/her own very personal order for the chapters simply by ordering the sequence of letters differently. For an elementary law of Mathematics, this can give rise to an astronomically large number of possible books -- all the same, but - then again - all different. This book is therefore the ideal companion for an infinite number of real or metaphoric journeys

Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Abel. An Elliptic Thriller (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 1-10
Boltzmann. The Genius of Disorder (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 11-19
Chandra. The Journey of a Star (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 21-30
Dirac. Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 31-38
Erdös. The Wandering Mathematician (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 39-48
Faraday. An Electric Discovery (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 49-57
Germain. Sophie’s Choice (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 59-67
Harriot. Down the Spiral (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 69-77
Ising. A Magnetic Modesty (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 79-85
Joliot-Curie. The Dream of the Alchemist (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 87-96
Kepler. Cannonballs and Honeycomb Cells (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 97-105
Landau. The Ten Commandments (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 107-117
Maxwell. Fiat Lux (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 119-128
Nucleus. My Name Is Lise Meitner (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 129-137
Oppenheimer. An Explosive Plan (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 139-148
Pauli. An Odd Couple (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 149-157
Quantum. Erwin’s Version (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 159-167
Rasetti. From Atomic Nuclei to Cambrian Trilobites (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 169-178
Spallanzani. Priest Jokes (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 179-186
Touschek. The Lord of the Rings (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 187-194
Ulam. The Art of Simulation (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 195-202
Venus. The Cruel Goddess (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 203-211
Weil. The Brahmin of Mathematics (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 213-221
X-Rays. Seeing the Invisible (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 223-230
Yang-Lee. The Puzzle of the Mirror (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 231-239
Zero. Someone Likes Cold (Giuseppe Mussardo)....Pages 241-248

2020-11-09