Skip to main content

Measures of Genius - Alan Durden ***

There are broadly three ways to write a popular science book. The author can focus on one particular area of science, on the life and work of a key scientist, or use some linking mechanism to pull together a range of topics. This last approach can be very successful, and is tempting to authors and loved by publishers, which implies that they sell well - but it is the most difficult approach to take.

To compare the good and bad sides of such 'linked topic' books, it's only necessary to take a look at titles covering the periodic table. The less successful ones just work through the elements, or a subset of them, in some kind of pattern based on the table itself. But that results in a very mechanical approach, little more than textbook lite. The alternative, typified by The Disappearing Spoon, is to use the broad theme of the chemical elements, but to let the narrative structure carry the reader through, resulting in a far more successful presentation.

Measures of Genius is a linked topic book, pulling together short scientific biographies of historical figures with scientific units named after them. Following an introductory chapter on the nature and development of measurement, we get 14 chapters each on a scientist (in the case of Fahrenheit and Celsius, two for the price of one) who inspired a unit, from very familiar names like Isaac Newton and James Watt to those whose units are better known than the individuals, typified by Ohm, Ampere and Coulomb. However, Alan Durden does not limit himself to the specific scientist's work, where necessary pulling in other names. So, for instance, in Ampere's chapter, Young, Huygens, Arago, Fresnel and Oersted all pop up.

Although the book has a linking theme, it's an arbitrary one, as the selection of scientists to provide unit names has sometimes been decidedly odd. My biggest concern was why we should care about this group of individuals. Durden provides us with plenty of facts about their lives and work, but doesn't build much of a narrative. When covering the well-known figures, the content was solid without adding a lot to the many other scientific biographies on these subjects, staying safely at the uncontroversial end of the spectrum. So, for instance, Newton's sexuality was skirted around, and though his interests in alchemy and biblical research were mentioned, there was little opportunity to understand why they were so important to him. Similarly, Tesla's chapter gives no feel for the fascinating conflict between his genius at electrical engineering and his sometimes shaky grasp of physics, leading to his dismissal of relativity and misapprehension about the nature of electromagnetic radiation.

It was great, however, to find out more about the lesser-known figures. These were inevitably more interesting because there has been so little written about them, though in most case it seems that one of the reasons that they don't feature more widely is that they were rather dull people. There are plenty of facts here, and I think the book would be extremely useful as a way to get some background on the contributions these individuals made to science and technology, but I would have liked a little more flair along the way.


Paperback 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Philip Ball - How Life Works Interview

Philip Ball is one of the most versatile science writers operating today, covering topics from colour and music to modern myths and the new biology. He is also a broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct, and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He is also the author of The Modern Myths. He lives in London. His latest title is How Life Works . Your book is about the ’new biology’ - how new is ’new’? Great question – because there might be some dispute about that! Many

Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work - Roger Highfield ****

It is easy to suspect that a biographical book from highly-illustrated publisher Dorling Kindersley would be mostly high level fluff, so I was pleasantly surprised at the depth Roger Highfield has worked into this large-format title. Yes, we get some of the ephemera so beloved of such books, such as a whole page dedicated to Hawking's coxing blazer - but there is plenty on Hawking's scientific life and particularly on his many scientific ideas. I've read a couple of biographies of Hawking, but I still came across aspects of his lesser fields here that I didn't remember, as well as the inevitable topics, ranging from Hawking radiation to his attempts to quell the out-of-control nature of the possible string theory universes. We also get plenty of coverage of what could be classified as Hawking the celebrity, whether it be a photograph with the Obamas in the White House, his appearances on Star Trek TNG and The Big Bang Theory or representations of him in the Simpsons. Ha

The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson ****

This is a curate's egg - sections are gripping, others rather dull. Overall the writing could be better... but the central message is fascinating and the book gets four stars despite everything because of this. That central message is that, as the subtitle says, science can't ignore human experience. This is not a cry for 'my truth'. The concept comes from scientists and philosophers of science. Instead it refers to the way that it is very easy to make a handful of mistakes about what we are doing with science, as a result of which most people (including many scientists) totally misunderstand the process and the implications. At the heart of this is confusing mathematical models with reality. It's all too easy when a mathematical model matches observation well to think of that model and its related concepts as factual. What the authors describe as 'the blind spot' is a combination of a number of such errors. These include what the authors call 'the bifur