In lucid and literary prose, Lightman paints the intellectual and emotional landscape of each discovery, portrays the personalities and human drama of the scientists involved, and explains the significance and impact of the work. He explores such questions as whether there were common patterns of research, whether the discoveries were accidental or intentional, and whether the scientists were aware of or oblivious to the significance of what they had found. Finally, Lightman gives an unprecedented and exhilarating guided tour through each of the original papers, which are included in the book. Here are Einstein and Bohr, McClintock and Pauling, Planck and Heisenberg, and many others in their own words, grappling with the nature of the world. Original in its scope and depth, The Discoveries offers an extraordinary exploration into the nature of scientific discoveries and the minds of the men and women who made them.

"[Lightman’s] love and respect for both science and art permeate these luminous essays."

—The Globe and Mail

"There is no better gift for a young, aspiring scientist than this little book of 11 essays, or for that matter for any nonscientist who wants to know what it feels like to be a scientist . . . [Lightman] is a scientist who is a humanist in the noblest sense of the word."

—The Los Angeles Times Book Review

Einstein’s Dreams, The Diagnosis, and Reunion are

available in paperback from Vintage Books.

1. THE QUANTUM

—“On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum,” by Max Planck (1900)

2. HORMONES

—“The Mechanism of Pancreatic Secretion,” by William Bayliss and Ernest Starling (1902)

3. THE PARTICLE NATURE OF LIGHT

—“On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” by Albert Einstein (1905)

4. SPECIAL RELATIVITY

—“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” by Albert Einstein (1905)

5. THE NUCLEUS OF THE ATOM

—“The Scattering of alpha and beta Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom,” by Ernest Rutherford (1911)

6. THE SIZE OF THE COSMOS

—“Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud,” by Henrietta Leavitt (1912)

7. THE ARRANGEMENT OF ATOMS IN SOLID MATTER

—“Interference Phenomena with Röntgen Rays,” by W. Friedrich, P. Knipping, and M. von Laue (1912)

8. THE QUANTUM ATOM

—“On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules,” by Niels Bohr (1913)

9. THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN NERVES

—“On the Humoral Transmission of the Action of the Cardiac Nerve,” by Otto Loewi (1921)

10. THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

—“On the Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics,” Werner Heisenberg (1927)

11. THE CHEMICAL BOND

—“The Shared-Electron Chemical Bond,” by Linus Pauling (1928)

12. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE

—“A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” by Edwin Hubble (1929)

13. ANTIBIOTICS

—“On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of Penicillium, with Special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B. Influenzae,” by Alexander Fleming (1929)

14. THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF ENERGY IN LIVING ORGANISMS

—“The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues,” by Hans Krebs and W. A. Johnson (1937)

15. NUCLEAR FISSION

—“Concerning the Existence of Alkaline Earth Metals Resulting from Neutron Irradiation of Uranium,” by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann (1939) and

—“Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction,” by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch (1939)

16. THE MOVABILITY OF GENES

—“Mutable Loci in Maize,” Barbara McClintock (1948)

17. THE STRUCTURE OF DNA

—“Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,” by James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick (1953) and

—“Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate,” by Rosalind E. Franklin and R. G. Gosling (1953)

18. THE STRUCTURE OF PROTEINS

—“Structure of Hæmoglobin,” by Max F. Perutz, M. G. Rossmann, Ann F. Cullis, Hilary Muirhead, Georg Will, and A. C. T. North (1960)

19. RADIO WAVES FROM THE BIG BANG

—“A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s,” by Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson and

—“Cosmic Black-Body Radiation,” by Robert H. Dicke, P. James E. Peebles, Peter G. Roll, and David T. Wilkinson (1965)

20. A UNIFIED THEORY OF FORCES

—“A Model of Leptons,”" by Steven Weinberg (1967)

21. QUARKS: A TINIEST ESSENCE OF MATTER

—“Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering,” by M. Breidenbach, J. I. Friedman, H. W. Kendall, E. D. Bloom, D. H. Coward, H. DeStaebler, J. Drees, L. W. Mo, and R. E. Taylor (1969)

22. THE CREATION OF ALTERED FORMS OF LIFE

—“Biochemical Method of Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40,” by David A. Jackson, Robert H. Symons, and Paul Berg (1972)

EPILOGUE

Notes

Abridgments of Papers

Acknowledgments

Permission Acknowledgments

Index