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The Science Class You Wish You Had (Revised Edition): The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History and the People Who Made Them
What does E=mc2 really mean? What is DNA? What was the big bang? These scientific concepts have changed our perception of the world…but for many of us they remain mysteries, bits and pieces of information retained from classroom lectures but never truly understood.
Now we can finally grasp the grandeur and complexity of these ideas, and their significance in our lives. Revised and updated to include the latest discoveries that are changing the way we view the world and the universe, this new edition of The Science Class You Wish You Had will take you on a journey through space and time—from the subatomic to the universal. It explains in a lively, accessible way what these milestones of scientific discovery mean and what direct impact they have on our lives today and will have in the future.
For everyone interested in science, history, and biographies of extraordinary people—or anyone who wants to understand the workings of the physical world—this thorough and authoritative book is a perfect introduction to science’s most profound discoveries, and a testament to the triumph of human knowledge.
Gravity and the Basic Laws of Physics
Rutherford and The Structure of the Atom
The Principle of Relativity
The Big Bang and the Formation of the Universe
Evolution and the Principle of Natural Selection
Flemming and The Cell and Genetics
Watson and The Structure of the DNA Molecule
Now we can finally grasp the grandeur and complexity of these ideas, and their significance in our lives. Revised and updated to include the latest discoveries that are changing the way we view the world and the universe, this new edition of The Science Class You Wish You Had will take you on a journey through space and time—from the subatomic to the universal. It explains in a lively, accessible way what these milestones of scientific discovery mean and what direct impact they have on our lives today and will have in the future.
For everyone interested in science, history, and biographies of extraordinary people—or anyone who wants to understand the workings of the physical world—this thorough and authoritative book is a perfect introduction to science’s most profound discoveries, and a testament to the triumph of human knowledge.
Gravity and the Basic Laws of Physics
Rutherford and The Structure of the Atom
The Principle of Relativity
The Big Bang and the Formation of the Universe
Evolution and the Principle of Natural Selection
Flemming and The Cell and Genetics
Watson and The Structure of the DNA Molecule
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
26 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 24, 2020
The title implies that these guys are going to make hard things easier for you to understand. They deal with seven basic scientific concepts: gravity, atomic structure, relativity, the big bang, evolution, cells, and DNA. In the areas that I already understand pretty well, I had no trouble following their explanations. But when they got into cells and DNA, I was completely lost. Which brought me to the conclusion that it’s hard to make hard things easy. Einstein was supposedly good at it, but these guys aren’t. Then, too, they spend a disproportionate part of their book on evolution, showing (with very little evidence) man’s descent from ape-like creatures. They say, “Evolution is far from a theory–it is a principle beyond question and beyond debate.” If you don’t believe it, you have a destructive and irrational agenda, and you’re “straight out of the dark ages, seeking to place emotion before reason.” Now, who has the agenda, here? I had a good laugh over this. As for the book itself, there are bits of interesting information here and there, but it’s probably not worth spending your valuable time on.
May 14, 2025
I would give more stars if it were only for the first four sections, though there would still be some disappointments.
First of all, the first part of the title gave me the impression that it would be a lot more fun, where there are all of these cool things that make you see the world around you in a new way. Instead, this book is more the subtitle, The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History and the People Who Made Them, only make it a little stuffier: A History of Great Discoveries in Science. That doesn't sound as fun, but it would be something this book does and fairly well.
Sometimes there is this whiff of condescension, though, that gets stronger as it goes along at the same time that it is getting more scattered. The book could easily lose 60 pages if it didn't dither so much around some points.
Based on the way it dithers, I think it is mainly that they want to call Creationists stupid (they kind of do, but I think they wanted to let loose more), and I get that, but they should have come up with a more precise statement of the issue with what influences science that they could state once and let go.
The irony is that as much as they are showing scientific understandings evolving and changing, so they should know that even things that seem pretty clear are not always settled, they cling hard to the Bering Land Bridge being the first way indigenous peoples came to the Americas. The studies calling that into question happened well after the book was published, but it's the attitude.
I think the reason they did is because they associated skepticism on that with religious beliefs and other traditions, so they tied that in with people overrunning school boards to get creationism taught in schools, which was very much a thing at the time of publication. However, not all religious people and beliefs have the same results, and respect can be really important. So, when it sounds like they are kind of pro-eugenics, and later they seem to walk it back but it seems totally possible they could be racist, when probably they are really just a little bit arrogant while also being passionate about evolution.
First of all, the first part of the title gave me the impression that it would be a lot more fun, where there are all of these cool things that make you see the world around you in a new way. Instead, this book is more the subtitle, The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History and the People Who Made Them, only make it a little stuffier: A History of Great Discoveries in Science. That doesn't sound as fun, but it would be something this book does and fairly well.
Sometimes there is this whiff of condescension, though, that gets stronger as it goes along at the same time that it is getting more scattered. The book could easily lose 60 pages if it didn't dither so much around some points.
Based on the way it dithers, I think it is mainly that they want to call Creationists stupid (they kind of do, but I think they wanted to let loose more), and I get that, but they should have come up with a more precise statement of the issue with what influences science that they could state once and let go.
The irony is that as much as they are showing scientific understandings evolving and changing, so they should know that even things that seem pretty clear are not always settled, they cling hard to the Bering Land Bridge being the first way indigenous peoples came to the Americas. The studies calling that into question happened well after the book was published, but it's the attitude.
I think the reason they did is because they associated skepticism on that with religious beliefs and other traditions, so they tied that in with people overrunning school boards to get creationism taught in schools, which was very much a thing at the time of publication. However, not all religious people and beliefs have the same results, and respect can be really important. So, when it sounds like they are kind of pro-eugenics, and later they seem to walk it back but it seems totally possible they could be racist, when probably they are really just a little bit arrogant while also being passionate about evolution.
January 7, 2022
Very tendentiously expressing the enlightenment view that religion is superstition and that pagan philosophy is the sole driving force behind science.
Ofcourse this amounts to the delusion that paganism does not cover-up the truth of human nature, thus inhibiting the pursuit of truth through love of God and fellow man that expels superstition, which was the driving force for the jesuits who invented astronomy. Science is christianized pagan philosophy, i.e. taking metaphysical speculation down to earth in order to serve fellow man (Francis Bacons philosophy) just like God became man. This is possible when the universe is believed to be structured on love, not pagan violence, Pride, leading to superstition
Ofcourse this amounts to the delusion that paganism does not cover-up the truth of human nature, thus inhibiting the pursuit of truth through love of God and fellow man that expels superstition, which was the driving force for the jesuits who invented astronomy. Science is christianized pagan philosophy, i.e. taking metaphysical speculation down to earth in order to serve fellow man (Francis Bacons philosophy) just like God became man. This is possible when the universe is believed to be structured on love, not pagan violence, Pride, leading to superstition
October 19, 2024
This was pretty good, although there were numerous annoying errors that could have easily been caught had the publishers bothered to have it proof-read.
Example: On page 4, describing the advent of the Black Death from China to Europe via an incident of germ warfare "...when a Kipchak army (a tribe of the Mongol Empire) attacked a trading post in Genoa, Italy..." by flinging plague-infected corpses over the town walls. The next paragraph describes the inhabitants fleeing "from the Black Sea towards the Mediterranean". What? It took a careful re-reading to realize the Mongols were attacking a trading post in the Black Sea area, established by traders *from* Genoa. Ah. At another point, discussing slime mold, they relate that "this mass of protoplasm forms a platform with a stock that produces spores...", which confused me until I realized "stock" was meant to be "stalk".
There were other, similar errors, misspellings and misuse of words, that just brought me to a halt while I figured out what the heck they were on about. Proof-readers, dammit, proof-readers. AI is crap at that.
Anyhow, the book itself does a fair job of describing and explaining some of the big breakthroughs in human understanding of how the universe works. I am always fascinated by how many people, working away at their own niches of enquiry, advance the sum of human knowledge to a tipping point and then some one or few take a leap to a new level.
I won't say that I now entirely understand all these big ideas. My brain has resolutely refused to encompass quantum physics over many attempts, and I am not substantially wiser now. But I do appreciate the historical perspective and the personal accounts of the various people involved in all this exceptional discovery.
Possibly my very favourite scientist is Hugo DeVries, a man of really admirable moral character. I think most of us have learned that Gregor Mendel's work on the genetics of pea plants was not widely appreciated in his own time, but I did not realize that it was only due to DeVries that his name is known today at all. In 1900, DeVries, having done independent work in the same area, and about to publish, did some more research and discovered the only document relating Mendel's work - in a 35-year-old copy of "Proceedings of the Brno Society for the Study of Natural Science, 1865". This not-at-all eminent society published the papers presented to it annually and sent copies to libraries around Europe. Where it was quietly shelved and forgotten. In his own paper, DeVries noted Mendel's work and said "[It] is so rarely quoted that I myself did not become acquainted with it until I had concluded most of my experiments, and had independently deduced the above propositions". As the authors of this book relate, when other scientists went to look up Mendel's study, it was found that the pages had not been cut - nobody had ever read those words. It would have been so easy for DeVries to just pretend he'd never seen Mendel's report and publish his own work without mentioning him, but he did not. We so often hear of scientists doing underhanded things to advance their own reputations, I was quite enchanted by this story.
Example: On page 4, describing the advent of the Black Death from China to Europe via an incident of germ warfare "...when a Kipchak army (a tribe of the Mongol Empire) attacked a trading post in Genoa, Italy..." by flinging plague-infected corpses over the town walls. The next paragraph describes the inhabitants fleeing "from the Black Sea towards the Mediterranean". What? It took a careful re-reading to realize the Mongols were attacking a trading post in the Black Sea area, established by traders *from* Genoa. Ah. At another point, discussing slime mold, they relate that "this mass of protoplasm forms a platform with a stock that produces spores...", which confused me until I realized "stock" was meant to be "stalk".
There were other, similar errors, misspellings and misuse of words, that just brought me to a halt while I figured out what the heck they were on about. Proof-readers, dammit, proof-readers. AI is crap at that.
Anyhow, the book itself does a fair job of describing and explaining some of the big breakthroughs in human understanding of how the universe works. I am always fascinated by how many people, working away at their own niches of enquiry, advance the sum of human knowledge to a tipping point and then some one or few take a leap to a new level.
I won't say that I now entirely understand all these big ideas. My brain has resolutely refused to encompass quantum physics over many attempts, and I am not substantially wiser now. But I do appreciate the historical perspective and the personal accounts of the various people involved in all this exceptional discovery.
Possibly my very favourite scientist is Hugo DeVries, a man of really admirable moral character. I think most of us have learned that Gregor Mendel's work on the genetics of pea plants was not widely appreciated in his own time, but I did not realize that it was only due to DeVries that his name is known today at all. In 1900, DeVries, having done independent work in the same area, and about to publish, did some more research and discovered the only document relating Mendel's work - in a 35-year-old copy of "Proceedings of the Brno Society for the Study of Natural Science, 1865". This not-at-all eminent society published the papers presented to it annually and sent copies to libraries around Europe. Where it was quietly shelved and forgotten. In his own paper, DeVries noted Mendel's work and said "[It] is so rarely quoted that I myself did not become acquainted with it until I had concluded most of my experiments, and had independently deduced the above propositions". As the authors of this book relate, when other scientists went to look up Mendel's study, it was found that the pages had not been cut - nobody had ever read those words. It would have been so easy for DeVries to just pretend he'd never seen Mendel's report and publish his own work without mentioning him, but he did not. We so often hear of scientists doing underhanded things to advance their own reputations, I was quite enchanted by this story.
February 11, 2020
The sort of book that is perfect for a recent high school graduate heading off to university in a few months. It provides the sort of basic scientific background that everyone should have, especially those who are starting to consider what academic path to follow. And as a "history of science" book it is also perfect those in the arts and social sciences.
No matter what our field of study, we should probably have a general idea of how physics work, what evolution is, etc. Obviously the authors here can't cover all seven of the "greatest scientific discoveries in history" in depth, but they do provide a wonderful introduction to all of them.
Recommended.
No matter what our field of study, we should probably have a general idea of how physics work, what evolution is, etc. Obviously the authors here can't cover all seven of the "greatest scientific discoveries in history" in depth, but they do provide a wonderful introduction to all of them.
Recommended.
September 10, 2020
I think it delivered what it promises, a quick summary of the discoveries of science. There is a little too much pressure to abandon all doubt about the "essence of life" and a fine treatment of the conflict between religion and science. In the summary I wanted to argue with the authors and wonder if they would like to revise their pride in progress in eradicating diseases due to the current pandemic. Very informative.
October 26, 2017
Simply wonderful. Easy to read but enormously thought provoking. One of the best books on science I've ever read.
February 27, 2019
I read this in 8th grade and I fell in love.
February 19, 2021
just enough detail to understand things at a high level. great refresher for someone who hasn't taken a science class in 50 years!
October 31, 2013
When I first started reading this book I did not think I would like it very much; who would think that a book written entirely about science could be good? It turned out to be an incredibly interesting book. It provided me with a lot of insight on several major scientific discoveries and who made them.
The book is set up in seven large chapters; each containing one imperative discovery. These chapters were then split into smaller sub sections that built of the stories of the discoveries. I feel that this made to book very easy to read and understand. It also helped keep the information at a constant flow, which stopped it from being overwhelming. This book also provided in-depth and stimulating information on all of the people who contributed to the discoveries. While talking about the childhood of evolutionist Charles Darwin, the authors show the hardships that he had to go through. “Darwin’s mother died when he was eights, and his eldest sister, Caroline, raised him” (187). These types of intimate details about their lives made the scientists easily to relate to. Many of these scientists were portrayed as normal, down to earth people; which helped me make connections to what they were undertaking.
I felt that this book did a wonderful job of presenting science as something that has to do with our everyday lives. “Science can be likened to a beautiful tapestry woven with different threads that have common features, but also demonstrate the extraordinary diversity of human thought in the creative process.” (1) It exclaims that science is the key to understanding everything, and provides vital details on how many things can be clarified.
I decided to give this book five out of five stars. Although it was relatively easy to understand, it still provided me with pronounced details and stimulating scientific knowledge.
The book is set up in seven large chapters; each containing one imperative discovery. These chapters were then split into smaller sub sections that built of the stories of the discoveries. I feel that this made to book very easy to read and understand. It also helped keep the information at a constant flow, which stopped it from being overwhelming. This book also provided in-depth and stimulating information on all of the people who contributed to the discoveries. While talking about the childhood of evolutionist Charles Darwin, the authors show the hardships that he had to go through. “Darwin’s mother died when he was eights, and his eldest sister, Caroline, raised him” (187). These types of intimate details about their lives made the scientists easily to relate to. Many of these scientists were portrayed as normal, down to earth people; which helped me make connections to what they were undertaking.
I felt that this book did a wonderful job of presenting science as something that has to do with our everyday lives. “Science can be likened to a beautiful tapestry woven with different threads that have common features, but also demonstrate the extraordinary diversity of human thought in the creative process.” (1) It exclaims that science is the key to understanding everything, and provides vital details on how many things can be clarified.
I decided to give this book five out of five stars. Although it was relatively easy to understand, it still provided me with pronounced details and stimulating scientific knowledge.
April 10, 2014
In keeping with my science books for 2014 resolution, I started back at the foundation, filling in the things I know I missed in high school, and pleasantly filling in the recent advances that have occurred since I last even considered science in college (did you know the Human Genome is done now?! hahahahah)
A very basic and accessible primer of the seven great ground shifting changes of science. Even the parts I was confident I knew well, were fun to read because the history aspect of the times in which the advances occurred informed so much of the grandeur of the science breakthrough; so much personal passion in the face of adversity and (misinformed) orthodoxy.
The epilogue was also very informative discussing the move away from individual research and large advances, to more collective research and incremental understanding and advances within these larger (now interdisciplinary) seven major achievements in science.
Cool stuff for the layman, scientists you already probably know all this, so read some philosophy instead!
A very basic and accessible primer of the seven great ground shifting changes of science. Even the parts I was confident I knew well, were fun to read because the history aspect of the times in which the advances occurred informed so much of the grandeur of the science breakthrough; so much personal passion in the face of adversity and (misinformed) orthodoxy.
The epilogue was also very informative discussing the move away from individual research and large advances, to more collective research and incremental understanding and advances within these larger (now interdisciplinary) seven major achievements in science.
Cool stuff for the layman, scientists you already probably know all this, so read some philosophy instead!
June 22, 2009
Awesome! Explains how seven of the most important scientific discoveries took place, along with biographical information about the scientists who made the discoveries, including Isaac Newton (Gravity), Einstein (Theory of Relativity), Darwin ( Evolution) Watson & Crick (DNA), and Edwin Hubble (The Big Bang).
January 2, 2015
This is the first book I have finished reading for 2015. This is a wonderful and easy to read introduction to the history of science. The book focuses on the seven major scientific discoveries in history: Gravity/Physics, the atom, Relativity, the Big Bang, Evolution, the cell/genetics, and DNA. Prior scientific knowledge is not necessary to understand and enjoy this book.
June 28, 2008
Here's another great primer on something everyone should know and appreciate.
January 13, 2014
Interesting to learn about all the people involved in shaping our scientific world. A little too preachy in knocking organized religion for stifling scientific progress.
September 8, 2014
Easy to read and full of interesting historical facts about the 7 most significant scientific discoveries. Great insight into how these came about.
September 21, 2015
Advanced and detailed enough for someone with a science background, good explanations and easily read enough to appeal to those who doesn't. Everyone should read this actually.
December 31, 2015
Somewhat dated introduction to the history of science. Easy reading and well thought out. However, the authors take a very simplistic view of religion as the enemy of science.
April 7, 2017
I bought the original version of this book in 1997 then never got around to reading it. Recently, while reading a sci-fi novel, I came to the conclusion that I have forgotten a great many details of the science that I used to know. It makes sense, right? I haven't taken an actual science class since 1992 (the last two I took were Neuroanatomy and Neurophisiology in graduate school). So I needed a refresher, and by Jove I got one! This is the updated version, published just two or three years ago.
This book covers the basics of the seven greatest scientific discoveries in human history. Things like gravity, evolution, the Big Bang, and the properties of atoms. All fascinating stuff, and written in largely no-technical narrative writing (that is, the authors are telling a story about people and their discoveries). I was reminded of how much I don't love chemistry, and how fascinated I am by astronomy. I sort of skimmed the evolution part, having recently read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by the indomitable Richard Dawkins.
Were I to suggest a basic science text to someone who wanted a readable, Big Picture overview, this would be the one. Great book!
This book covers the basics of the seven greatest scientific discoveries in human history. Things like gravity, evolution, the Big Bang, and the properties of atoms. All fascinating stuff, and written in largely no-technical narrative writing (that is, the authors are telling a story about people and their discoveries). I was reminded of how much I don't love chemistry, and how fascinated I am by astronomy. I sort of skimmed the evolution part, having recently read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by the indomitable Richard Dawkins.
Were I to suggest a basic science text to someone who wanted a readable, Big Picture overview, this would be the one. Great book!
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May 12, 2018A fun read. Just enough detail to help you understand but not too much for the layman.
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