The Scientists; A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by John Gribbin (2006-01-01) Hardcover

by John Gribbin

A wonderfully readable account of scientific development over the past five hundred years, focusing on the lives and achievements of individual scientists, by the bestselling author of In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat In this ambitious new book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction. By focusing on the scientists themselves, Gribbin has written an anecdotal narrative enlivened with stories of personal drama, success and failure. A bestselling science writer with an international reputation, Gribbin is among the few authors who could even attempt a work of this magnitude. Praised as “a sequence of witty, information-packed tales” and “a terrific read” by The Times upon its recent British publication, The Scientists breathes new life into such venerable icons as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling, as well as lesser lights whose stories have been undeservedly neglected. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.

Genres: Science, History, Nonfiction, Biography, History Of Science, Physics, World History

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

John R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction.

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should preface this by saying that I love learning about science, especially chemistry.

I wondered at the outset if I would ever finish this book because it contained over 600 pages about the history of science, but I found myself turning pages much faster than expected. Gribbin does a fantastic job of keeping science history interesting by intermingling fascinating tales about the lives of several prominent scientists and squabbles had amongst those great thinkers. He manages to mention almost every notable scientist (that I can think of) from Ptolemy to present, with accompanying details that are often new to the reader.

I found his description of the relationship between Hooke and Newton to be particularly interesting. It is the relationships among all the different scientists that is handled in great light in this book. Gribbin acknowledges which scientists came before or after others, those who lived and worked along side one another, those who were close friends, those who built on the ideas of others, and those who were great competitors. For example, Robert Darwin found an unusual fossil near his home and brought it to the Royal Society where he met Newton (the Society’s President at the time). His son Erasmus Darwin was a great thinker and mingled with James Watt, Ben Franklin, and Joseph Priestly. Erasmus’ son Robert Darwin was a physician. His son was Charles Robert Darwin, now famous for his ideas on evolution by natural selection. Thus, Charles Darwin’s great-grandfather had met Isaac Newton.

Three scientists independently “discovered” a wealth of information pertaining to heredity and were about to publish in 1900, when one learned that Gregor Mendel had already published it in 1867. The true nature of scientific discovery is described well. The author argues, “It is the luck of the draw, or historical accident, whose name gets remembered as the discoverer of new phenomenon.” “Geniuses maybe; but irreplaceable certainly not.” His only exception to these criteria is Isaac Newton, without whom the author thinks science would have been held back a very long time.

Fascinating, Exciting, Science!

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overview books are tricky, and most fail. Many things have happened, y'know? And a book that includes a great deal of them often turns into...well, into a list of things that have happened. This is why all textbooks suck.

So one has to pick and choose, and the choice necessarily creates a perspective. You've picked up these select threads, which leaves you inevitably with that picture. And the trick in writing a good overview book is to end up with a picture that's interesting, compelling, and most of all, coherent.

I only read 100 pages of Gribbin's book and then set it down, because I have this complicated reading schedule and it called for these 100 pages and then something else. I'll come back to the rest later, when it arrives on my mental syllabus. But so far, I think Gribbin is picking the right threads. I like the line he draws from William Gilbert, of whom I'd never heard, to Galileo. It was neat; I liked learning about Gilbert, and I liked his take on Galileo. He's fussy about who he chooses to mention, and how much, and in relation to whom else, and it's working for me.

I look forward to getting back to this. I even have hopes of bumping it up to five stars when it's all over.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started out loving this book, it gave glimpses into the men who helped form science. When we approached the modern era, a time when some of the scientists discussed are still alive possibly, the tone changed... the book stopped being about the people and more only about the science. It was this change that threw me off... I suppose there is a valid reason to not continue the quirks to include something like Richard Dawkins has had a propensity to wear short shorts in public places (which I have witnessed), but it was precisely that the insights into scientists like Newton and Linnaeus were so fascinating to me.
Plus the soap box on the end about how sociologists and historians malign science by not giving it its merited status and instead "consider" it as not quite theory and merely subject to the whims of people... I thought that was unnecessary.

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of science told in many lives - each chapter focusing on one aspect of the history of science, with the chapter itself being a chronologically ordered story of scientific lives. In that aspect, it's very much like Bell's Men Of Mathematics (GR link, my review), not only is The Scientists structured similarly, the humorous tone and fun anecdotes are similar too:

Henry was painfully shy and hardly ever went out except to scientific gatherings - even at these, latecomers sometimes found him standing outside the door trying to pluck up enough courage to enter, long after he was a respected scientist in his own right. He communicated with his servants by writing them notes, wherever possible; and there are several stories about how on unexpectedly encountering a woman he did not know, he would shield his eyes with his hand and literally run away.

Since the author himself is a astrophysicist the focus is a bit more on physics, cosmology and astrophysics than on medicine or biology - two chapters are on biology (one on Lyell -> Darwin -> Wallace, one on Mendel -> many more I haven't heard of before (nice! Ever heard of Miescher?) -> Crick/Watson), only one part of a chapter is on medicine, one chapter on geology, the rest is physics (but that is a truth of the history of science - for a long time, Western scientists focused more on the stars and mechanics than on the human body).

Some more aspects I noted:

- Science shifted from a (often rich) gentleman's hobby to a full-time profession sometime around Darwin's life. I got nostalgic for a time where you could just work your whole life for a king without having to fill out grant applications every few years; but then again, you'd be dependent on the king's whims and mortality. Plus, with only a few outliers it was practically impossible for a "poor" person to even begin with scientific work.

- The descriptions of Galileo's and Bruno's troubles with the church are great - none of the usual "martyrs for science!" stuff, more (correct) focus on political and theological problems here. The history of scientists has, weirdly enough, quite a few arians in it.

- Gribbin goes through great pain to make it clear that to become "a name" in the history of science, it's often not some mythological personal genius, but luck of being the right hard-working person at the right position at the right time. He often details the people who also made the important discovery at the same time as the "famous" discoverer made it, but for some reason, have been forgotten by history.

- Fallopian tubes are called "tubes" even though Fallopio originally described them as "brass trumpets", i.e., tubas - "tubes" is a mistranslation.

- Gribbin is no fan of Newton - although his discoveries were manifold and important, his rather extreme personality made work for other scientists very hard, and the cult of Newton's personality after Newton's death kept progress in some areas of science behind. Gribbin correctly points out that Newton didn't receive the knighthood for his scientific advances, but as "a rather grubby bit of political opportunism by Halifax as part of his attempt to win the election of 1705".

- Especially towards the end this book gets more dry, almost as if Gribbin had a deadline coming up and slogged through writing it

- Dalton discovered colour blindness, as he himself suffered from it. Imagine making that discovery!!

- Gribbin's not a big fan of Kuhnian scientific revolutions, as the structure and the afterword of this book make it clear. To him, scientific progress is developed "essentially incremental, step-by-step".

Recommended for: Scientists, people interested in history or the history of science

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book manages to accomplish the not insignificant feat of taking material which is intrinsically fascinating, feeding it into a kind of death-prose generating machine, and regurgitating it as what feels like a single 600-page long indigestible eructation (to mix my digestive metaphors).

Shame on you, John Gribbin! In producing this ill-gotten lumpen-tour, which manages to leach all the interest out of what should be a fascinating magical mystery-tour, all you have managed to illuminate are the deathly pedestrian contours of your own imagination-starved mind.

Should anyone be tempted by this dismal tome, be aware that, despite its 600+ pages, its coverage of biology is scant and cartoonlike. The view is almost exclusively that of an ill-read physicist.

[Joe Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written comprehensive history of western science from the Renaissance to the modern era. The author frames this survey on a progression of scientists, famous and not. The brief biographical sketches provide a background of their early lives and who or what influenced them. This is an enjoyable way to tell this history. You get some familiarity with the individuals and their struggles and successes, and you get a story of the evolution of the scientific process from its beginnings as natural philosophy to the experimental method. The reader gets a thorough understanding of how science has evolved. There are times when it is difficult to shift ideas, but facts and proofs give science fluidity that eventually overcomes rigid thinking.

I found it interesting how some scientists are credited with a discovery, even get the discovery named after them, and they’re not the first one to make the discovery. This survey of the scientists explains why this happens.

It is very clear from this history that what is considered a revolutionary discovery in science is really an evolution. By telling the history of science via the progression of thinkers, discoverers, & scientists, we fully see how science has evolved and is built on the shoulders of those who came before, and those shoulders are not necessarily all giants.

Considering the scope of this study and the number of individuals covered, this book is an amazing achievement.

[JS Found · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'd want to get this book for your kid. Along with Carl Sagan's Cosmos and both TV adaptations. Because science, properly taught or written about, can be very exciting for a kid to learn. This is the story of all its wonders told by bios of the people who invented and discovered them.

400 years of science are elegantly compacted into this synthesis, but Gribbin writes with such ease and clarity, with all the pleasures of narrative history, that you don't notice you're learning science. Not the tedious memorization of facts in a school textbook. This is science as it was discovered, when the scientists had no idea what they had found out, and what they were learning. It's really a suspense tale. A scientist will do an experiment, not sure whether it will work or not, not knowing what he will discover, and whether his hypothesis will be proven right, or at least not wrong, or whether he will stumble upon something else entirely. Something perhaps revolutionary that will permanently change life and the world forever.

Gribbin structures the story by time and scientific subject. We start with Copernicus and Galileo and end with quantum physics and the latest cosmology. In between chemistry, evolution, genetics, geology, electromagnetism and the nature of light are elucidated. The bios help ease the learning by humanizing it: science becomes the discoveries of flawed people, from all classes and walks of life who had desires, fears, rivalries, and lived through turbulent historical times, like everyone else. The story of science is a continuum--men and women from all through time building and expanding upon the work of the people who came before.

An essential book for any science library.

[Sarah Alma Angelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considering I've been "reading" this book since August 2017, it was time to make peace with the fact that I would never finish. Long, obviously, but well written. I like how the narrative reads like a story, rather than a bunch of science-history facts. Maybe one day, I'll get through the whole thing.

[Chris Ziesler · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography of science since 1543 told through a powerful account of the lives, inspirations and ideas of the scientists that investigated and unravelled the underlying mysteries of life and the universe.

[Chuck A · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read from front to back. It goes into detail (but not too much detail) all of the scientific advances and personalities throughout the last 500 years of western science. This book goes right up there with Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality as my favorite books. Highly recommend to anyone with an interest in science or the history of science. Gribbin is a great writer who presents complicated scientific concepts so that the average joe (me) can not only understand them (as much as one can with no background in mathematics) but develop a further interest in specific fields. This was an inspiring book that made me stoked to read more about science!

[Matt McCormick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel a little silly to be disappointed that a book about scientists had too much science for my enjoyment. The history of science is fascinating. To think of how much our knowledge has grown in just 500 years and exponentially over the past 200! It really wasn’t so long ago that most “educated” people believed the stars controlled our destiny and to protect ourselves from magic we needed to burn fellow humans to death.

The early scientists were heroic as they challenged the orthodoxy of state and church.

The first half of Gribben’s history is fascinating, Likely because I could understand 80% of the rudimentary science. As time passed my understanding plummeted and so did my reading pleasure. I’m sure a more scientifically astute reader will get more enjoyment from this history than I.

[Mscout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of science told through the life of scientists. Gribbin has just the right touch of snark, and his own training as a scientist gives him a unique perspective.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gribbin, John. The Scientists: A History of Science Told through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors. Random House, 2004.
John Gribbin is a man of many parts. Trained in astrophysics under Fred Hoyle, Gribbin is almost as prolific a writer as Isaac Asimov. Most of his work has been science writing, but he has also done novels, children’s books, and biographies. He and a colleague wrongly predicted that the position of the planets would cause an earthquake in the San Andreas Fault in the 1980s, but they both disavowed their work early, Gribbin calling it “too clever by half.” The Scientists is a readable history of science from Copernicus to black holes and string theory. Unsurprisingly, it is heavy on astrophysics, but it also deals with chemistry, geology, and evolution. The major figures are shown to be men with diverse, fully rounded personalities. He argues that Robert Hooke deserves more credit than he gets and Newton perhaps less. He points out instances where seminal thinkers were ignored because someone else published first. In general, he says, the progress of science has been evolutionary in its development, not revolutionary. If you like works by Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, you will probably like The Scientists as well. 4 stars.

[Mickaël A · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history of science is fascinating. It is a good idea to tell it through the life of their inventors. Some links between scientific breakthroughs are worth telling. However the levels of details John Gribbin goes into is not adapted to the story telling of WHOLE science. Some parts are amazingly long and detailing minor facts like the social or political backgrounds. Interesting as they are, they don't deserve dozen of pages at once... Many other parts are very short and the author often states "this is not the place to go to much into details". After reading I felt like knowing a lot more but missing a lot more as well. Mathematics are totally missing (no Gauss, Poincaré, Fermat, almost no Leibnitz, Euler...). Biology, Chemistry and most of all Astronomy is well represented. I found some parts fascinating like the invention of the telescope, the discovery of radioactivity or the measurement of the age of the Earth.

[Deedee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous overview of scientists of the Western world. Gives a brief bio of each contributing scientists.

One "theme" that seems apparent throughout the centuries is that the history of scientific discoveries depends on those bright, inquisitive minds who have the means and the leisure to develop their thinking and their ideas. There are exceptions, to be sure, but mostly wealth promotes the scientist who makes the discoveries.

Another "theme" is how politics and religion and myth have stifled scientific discovery.

My take away is that, those who show cranial potential should be given the means, educated, and encouraged. That is the way to grow scientific discoveries exponentially and make our world a better place to live for all.

John Gribbin is a good writer who makes the Western world's scientific discoveries accessible to someone like me, who has no training in physics, chemistry, or biology. I had fun reading this book.

[Daniel Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book! Engaging, informative, and full of curiosity. I cannot imagine the amount of time it must have taken for the author to research the history of science and how it has brought us to where we are today. As a non-scientist, I enjoyed reading this even if I do not understand all of the findings. The author goes to great lengths to include a bit of history on the scientists, some of whom had previously been lost to history by more notable names. The reader will leave with a greater understanding of scientific progress against the backdrop of human history, and how much we have learned through human determination and curiosity in a really small window of time.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, this is somewhat like the World Book encyclopedia of science for the past 500 years; basically from the Renaissance to the millennia. I am far from a scientific mind so Encyclopedia Britannica would have done me in! This however is incredibly readable and comprehensive in a moderate depth. Gribbin has huge scientific knowledge and the great ability to explain it in pretty understandable terms - I still had to skip over some things but even then, I picked up new information and insight. I would love to have him over for lunch for about 40 years or take classes from him for 30 years. This is a fantastic read.

[Jon Lisle-Summers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book needs the word Western inserted between Of and Science. Otherwise, it's a tremendous excursion through the minds and achievements of 'modern science" which has, until quite recently, dominated the globe.

Indian, Chinese and Islamic science don't get a look-in here at all, which is a pity. In reality, some of the shoulders of giants upon which Isaac Newton stood came from these other great traditions.

Nevertheless I still enjoyed it, was entertained and educated by it.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a way this book was exactly what I was looking for. A book mainly about scientists throughout history and the roles they played. It was a very good read and it's clear the author is a passionate scientist. The only thing I was disappointed by was all that felt left out in the last 50 years of science. There were tidbits of information up to the 1990's but by the end of the book it was clear that the "history" pretty much ended by WW2.

[Robert Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick-moving description of science and scientists from Out of the Dark Ages to Outer Space. Engaging personal stories about many prominent and lessor-known but important scientists. Readers are treated to a wonderful ride through history of science to today. I enjoyed it much and recommend it to those who are curious about how sciences came about and evolved.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biographical approach to the history of science makes this topic accessible and interesting to those who are more literature and arts minded. I have this 4 stars rather than 5 because the last 1/4 of the book was incomprehensible to me; the sections on physics and chemistry were not put well enough into layman’s terms. Aside from this slight criticism, I highly recommend this book.

[Brian Hutzell · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Gribbin does his best to make difficult scientific concepts digestible to laymen like me. Even so, there were many times while reading this book that I felt more than a little at sea. It was an enjoyable read, nevertheless, and at least provided me with a nice historical overview of science thought from Copernicus right up to the 21st Century. Sure to come in handy for my sci-fi binges!

[Bo Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ambitious overview of science since the middle ages. If you can make it to the end, you'll be happy you did (and happy that you're done). Mr. Gribbin's writing is crisp and precise, but at times the material is dry and it can be slightly complex.

[Robert M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best history books I have ever read. Gribbin writes about the lives, habits, and work of the scientists as though they were contemporaries. It has taken me a long time, because it is a big book, but I have never been bored. I have bought copies for grandsons and friends.

[Jon Albarran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave it a 5 because it was useful in organizing the history of science by detailing many of the key figures and their contributions. Author must have done a metric butt-ton of research to obtain interesting biographical details.

[Bryan Higgs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an excellent book.

[Greg Parrott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A view of the history of science from the biographical notes of the scientists showing how each built on the prior work of the others; sometimes in a good way. sometimes not.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable non-fiction read. Not too tough, but something you would like in doses. I will try to keep reading the history of science over the next year. (CH#1 and #2)

[Sacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really really long book, but wow; I really enjoyed reading it!

[Blaize · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a tad long-winded, especially at the beginning, this book does a great job of giving an in-depth analysis and history of science, whether it be geometry or astrophysics.