Eurekas and euphorias : the Oxford book of scientific anecdotes / / Walter Gratzer

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910459604603321
• Autore: Gratzer W. B (Walter Bruno), <1932->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Oxford : , : Oxford University Press, , 2007
• ISBN: 0-19-157929-7
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (664 p.)
• Disciplina: 500; 502
• Soggetti: Science; Discoveries in science; Scientists; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di contenuto: Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Introduction; 1 The great stench; 2 Culture clash; 3 The reveries of Kekulé; 4 Rontgen's rays; 5 Light on sweetness: the discovery of aspartame; 6 Otto Stern's sulphurous cigars; 7 Metchnikoff restored to life; 8 An ill wind; 9 Marie Curie and the Immortals; 10 'Every integer his personal friend': Hardy visits Ramanujan; 11 David Hilbert's eulogy; 12 Rabi meets his match; 13 The Bucklands explode a miracle; 14 Farmyard thermodynamics; 15 Newton ponders; 16 Rutherford finds a solution; 17 The vanishing blackboard; 18 Cats and dogmas; 19 But what use is it?20 Unlocking the chains; 21 Of life and death; 22 Mathematical peril; 23 Fortune favours the ham fist; 24 To discern a true vocation; 25 The Pauli principle; 26 The first eureka; 27 Lordly disdain; 28 A martyr to science; 29 The marble and the mop; 30 Pythagoras's theme; 31 New ways with barometers; 32 The professor remembers; 33 Dalton's daltonism; 34 The trick of the tick; 35 Comfort in adversity; 36 Winter in Paris: Becquerel and the discovery of radioactivity; 37 The unbreakable cypher; 38 Two hundred monks aleaping and the devil in the bottle; 39 The success of the operation and the death of the patient40 Pendant ; professor; 41 Feud; 42 The man of few words; 43 Mauled by the Bulldog; 44 Damping the canine rotor; 45 Nemesis in Nancy; 46 Mathematician's melodrama; 47 Ben Franklin stills the waves; 48 Fraternal fire; 49 The wages of sin; 50 Loving an enzyme; 51 The poltergeist next door; 52 The problem solver; 53 The Resonance Bridge 88; 54 A laboratory libation; 55 Slot machine yields jackpot; 56 Shooting down Venus; 57 None so blind; 58 Raising the dead; 59 Vibrios in Vienna; 60 Drowning the telephone; 61 Trouble at t'lab; 62 The child is father to the man63 Hooke's tease; 64 Know your adversary; 65 The divine spark comes by night; 66 Following by example; 67 Science for survival; 68 The hounding of J. J. Sylvester; 69 The quiet American; 70 Solving the insoluble; 71 A sceptic confounded; 72 Wrong experiment, right conclusion; 73 Old soldiers never die; 74 A case of night starvation; 75 Fortunate furtive encounter; 76 Eddington's disobedient conscience; 77 Smoking for the Führer; 78 Polish and perish; 79 Baccy and quanta; 80 The country doctor, his captive, and the professor; 81 Whispers from the void; 82 The lying stones of Mount Eivelstadt83 The mind of a mathematician; 84 The old melon; 85 Strong medicine; 86 A Russian tragedy; 87 The way of the world; 88 Tug of war on the thread of life; 89 The trivial and profound; 90 Phlogiston consigned to flames; 91 The errant compass; 92 Liberation by fire; 93 How small is small?; 94 Seeing sparks; 95 A Victorian tragedy, a twentieth-century sequel; 96 A visit to the Führer; 97 Butterfly in Beijing; 98 Cook knows best; 99 Chemistry in the kitchen: the discovery of nitrocellulose; 100 The living fossil; 101 The sound of physics; 102 Grand Guignol; 103 The mathematical wallpaper
• Sommario/riassunto: The march of science has never proceeded smoothly. It has been marked through the years by episodes of drama and comedy, of failure as well as triumph, and by outrageous strokes of luck, deserved and undeserved, and sometimes by human tragedy. It has seen deep intellectual friendships, as well as ferocious animosities, and once in a while acts of theft and malice, deceit, and even a hoax or two. Scientists come in all shapes - the obsessive and the dilettantish, the genial, theenvious, the preternaturally brilliant and the slow-witted who sometimes see further in the end, the open-minded and t