From 2003: The Scientists by John Gribbin

October 18, 8:50 AMNon-Fiction Books ExaminerMarilyn Crain

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John Gribbin's book The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors has been added to many non-fiction libraries, especially to those owned by lifelong learners.

Gribbin, as usual, tells a great story, but one that opens up the lives of scientists we know well and some that we know not at all. He begins with Copernicus and takes us through 500 years of science--western science.

A favorite section of this book seems to be the last chapter, which he calls Coda: The Pleasure of Finding Thing Out. Had I not already enjoyed his writings, for his ability to make complicated things understandable, the minute he started talking about Richard Feynman, he immediately went toward the top of my list.

Gribbin ends the book this way, "And what motivates the great scientists is not the thirst for fame or fortune (although that can be a seductive lure for the less-than-great scientists), but what Richard Feynman called 'the pleasure of finding things out', a pleasure so satisfying that many of those great scientists, from Newton to Cavendish and from Charles Darwin to Feynman himself, have not even bothered to publish their findings unless pressed by their friends to do so, but a pleasure that would hardly exist if there were no truths to discover."
 

The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

• Author: John Gribbin
• Paperback: 646 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (2004) Hardcover (2003)