1. the chariot was invented: Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970), 26.
2. still using carrier pigeons: “Chronology: Reuters, from Pigeons to Multimedia Merger,” Reuters, February 19, 2008, accessed October 27, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/19/us-reuters-thomson-chronology-idUSL1849100620080219.
3. “The world of today”: Toffler, Future Shock, 13.
4. “as subjective and psychologically conditioned”: Albert Einstein, Einstein’s Essays in Science (New York: Wisdom Library, 1934), 112.
1. ratlike creatures: Maureen A. O’Leary et al., “The Placental Mammal Ancestor and the Post–K-Pg Radiation of Placentals,” Science 339 (February 8, 2013): 662–67.
2. “all life evolved to a certain point”: Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 9.
3. One of the first nearly human creatures: For the story of Lucy and her significance, see Donald C. Johanson, Lucy’s Legacy (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009). See also Douglas S. Massey, “A Brief History of Human Society: The Origin and Role of Emotion in Social Life,” American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 1–29.
4. Lucy’s large teeth: B. A. Wood, “Evolution of Australopithecines,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, ed. Stephen Jones, Robert D. Martin, and David R. Pilbeam (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 239.
5. the structure of her spine and knees indicates: Carol. V. Ward et al., “Complete Fourth Metatarsal and Arches in the Foot of Australopithecus afarensis,” Science 331 (February 11, 2011): 750–53.
6. If you did that …: 4 × 106 years ago = 2 × 105 generations; 2 × 105 houses × 100-foot-wide lot for each house ÷ 5,000 feet per mile = 4,000 miles.
7. About halfway there: James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 6–7.
8. Brain size varies considerably among: Javier DeFelipe, “The Evolution of the Brain, the Human Nature of Cortical Circuits, and Intellectual Creativity,” Frontiers in Neuroanatomy 5 (May 2011): 1–17.
9. Handy Man stood upright: Stanley H. Ambrose, “Paleolothic Technology and Human Evolution,” Science 291 (March 2, 2001): 1748–53.
10. Handy Men had used their stone cutters: “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, accessed October 27, 2014, www.humanorigins.si.edu.
11. In their struggle to procure food: Johann De Smedt et al., “Why the Human Brain Is Not an Enlarged Chimpanzee Brain,” in Human Characteristics: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Mind and Kind, ed. H. Høgh-Olesen, J. Tønnesvang, and P. Bertelsen (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 168–81.
12. bonobos fail to become proficient: Ambrose, “Paleolothic Technology and Human Evolution,” 1748–53.
13. Recent neuroimaging studies: R. Peeters et al., “The Representation of Tool Use in Humans and Monkeys: Common and Uniquely Human Features,” Journal of Neuroscience 29 (September 16, 2009): 11523–39; Scott H. Johnson-Frey, “The Neural Bases of Complex Tool Use in Humans,” TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 8 (February 2004): 71–78.
14. Sadly, there are rare cases: Richard P. Cooper, “Tool Use and Related Errors in Ideational Apraxia: The Quantitative Simulation of Patient Error Profiles,” Cortex 43 (2007): 319; Johnson-Frey, “The Neural Bases,” 71–78.
15. Homo erectus, or “Erect Man”: Johanson, Lucy’s Legacy, 192–93.
16. all descendants of those mere hundreds: Ibid., 267.
17. There is some controversy: András Takács-Sánta, “The Major Transitions in the History of Human Transformation of the Biosphere,” Human Ecology Review 11 (2004): 51–77. Some researchers believe that modern human behavior emerged first earlier, in Africa, and then was brought to Europe in a “second out-of-Africa” migration. See, for example, David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, Inside the Neolithic Mind (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 18; Johanson, Lucy’s Legacy, 257–62.
18. the second-most-expensive organ: Robin I. M. Dunbar and Suzanne Shultz, “Evolution in the Social Brain,” Science 317 (September 7, 2007): 1344–47.
19. Yet nature chose: Christopher Boesch and Michael Tomasello, “Chimpanzee and Human Cultures,” Current Anthropology 39 (1998): 591–614.
20. For example, they would: Lewis Wolpert, “Causal Belief and the Origins of Technology,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 361 (2003): 1709–19.
21. They examined the blocks: Daniel J. Povinelli and Sarah Dunphy-Lelii, “Do Chimpanzees Seek Explanations? Preliminary Comparative Investigations,” Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 55 (2001): 185–93.
22. scribbled down all the whys: Frank Lorimer, The Growth of Reason (London: K. Paul, 1929); quoted in Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Penguin, 1964), 616.
23. similar rising intonation: Dwight L. Bolinger, ed., Intonation: Selected Readings. (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1972), 314; Alan Cruttenden, Intonation (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 169–17.
24. six-month-olds sat in front of a horizontal track: Laura Kotovsky and Renee Notes to Pages 25–32 Baillargeon, “The Development of Calibration-Based Reasoning About Collision Events in Young Infants,” Cognition 67 (1998): 313–51.
1. the abundance of the land: James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 9–12.
2. For example, they built homes: Many of these developments had had precursors among older nomadic groups, but the technologies did not flourish, for the products did not fit the wandering lifestyle. See McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology, 20–21.
3. early farmers had more spinal issues: Jacob L. Weisdorf, “From Foraging to Farming: Explaining the Neolithic Revolution,” Journal of Economic Surveys 19 (2005): 562–86; Elif Batuman, “The Sanctuary,” New Yorker, December 19, 2011, 72–83.
4. a “material plenty”: Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (New York: Aldine Atherton, 1972), 1–39.
5. studies of the San people: Ibid., 21–22.
6. Göbekli Tepe: Andrew Curry, “Seeking the Roots of Ritual,” Science 319 (January 18, 2008): 278–80; Andrew Curry, “Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2008, accessed November 7, 2014, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html; Charles C. Mann, “The Birth of Religion,” National Geographic, June 2011, 34–59; Batuman, “The Sanctuary.”
7. “Within a minute of first seeing it”: Batuman, “The Sanctuary.”
8. The emergence of group-based religious ritual: Michael Balter, “Why Settle Down? The Mystery of Communities,” Science 20 (November 1998): 1442–46.
9. “You can make a good case”: Curry, “Gobekli Tepe.”
10. Neolithic peoples began to settle: McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology, 17–22.
11. Çatalhöyük: Balter, “Why Settle Down?,” 1442–46.
12. The difference between a village and a city: Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007), 21. See also Balter, “Why Settle Down?,” 1442–46.
13. Their extended family units often remained: Balter, “Why Settle Down?,” 1442–46; David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, Inside the Neolithic Mind (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 77–78.
14. inhabitants would open a grave: Ian Hodder, “Women and Men at Çatalhöyük,” Scientific American, January 2004, 81.
15. no longer viewed as partnering with animals: Ian Hodder, “Çatalhöyük in the Context of the Middle Eastern Neolithic,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 105–20.
16. The new attitude would eventually lead: Anil K. Gupta, “Origin of Agriculture and Domestication of Plants and Animals Linked to Early Holocene Climate Amelioration,” Current Science 87 (July 10, 2004); Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 11.
17. turned out a series of papers: L. D. Mlodinow and N. Papanicolaou, “SO (2, 1) Algebra and the Large N Expansion in Quantum Mechanics,” Annals of Physics 128 (1980): 314–34; L. D. Mlodinow and N. Papanicolaou, “Pseudo-Spin Structure and Large N Expansion for a Class of Generalized Helium Hamiltonians,” Annals of Physics 131 (1981): 1–35; Carl Bender, L. D. Mlodinow, and N. Papanicolaou, “Semiclassical Perturbation Theory for the Hydrogen Atom in a Uniform Magnetic Field,” Physical Review A 25 (1982): 1305–14.
18. “dimensional scaling”: Jean Durup, “On the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,” Laser Chemistry 7 (1987): 239–59. See also D. J. Doren and D. R. Herschbach, “Accurate Semiclassical Electronic Structure from Dimensional Singularities,” Chemical Physics Letters 118 (1985): 115–19; J. G. Loeser and D. R. Herschbach, “Dimensional Interpolation of Correlation Energy for Two-Electron Atoms,” Journal of Physical Chemistry 89 (1985): 3444–47.
19. In reality, Watt concocted: Andrew Carnegie, James Watt (New York: Doubleday, 1933), 45–64.
20. “Immature poets imitate”: T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays (New York: Dover Publications, 1997), 72. First published in 1920.
21. evolutionarily adapted to teach other humans: Gergely Csibra and György Gergely, “Social Learning and Cognition: The Case for Pedagogy,” in Processes in Brain and Cognitive Development, ed. Y. Munakata and M. H. Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): 249–74.
22. researchers studying distinct groups of chimps: Christophe Boesch, “From Material to Symbolic Cultures: Culture in Primates,” in The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology, ed. Juan Valsiner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 677–92. See also Sharon Begley, “Culture Club,” Newsweek, March 26, 2001, 48–50.
23. The best-documented example: Boesch, “From Material to Symbolic Cultures.” See also Begley, “Culture Club”; Bennett G. Galef Jr., “Tradition in Animals: Field Observations and Laboratory Analyses,” in Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behavior, ed. Marc Bekoff and Dale Jamieson (Oxford: Westview Press, 1990).
24. evidence of culture in many species: Boesch, “From Material to Symbolic Cultures.” See also Begley, “Culture Club.”
25. “Chimps can show other chimps”: Heather Pringle, “The Origins of Creativity,” Scientific American, March 2013, 37–43.
26. “cultural ratcheting”: Michael Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 5–6, 36–41.
27. Archaeologists sometimes compare: Fiona Coward and Matt Grove, “Beyond the Tools: Social Innovation and Hominin Evolution,” PaleoAnthropology (special issue, 2011): 111–29.
28. At Bell Labs: Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Knowledge (New York: Penguin, 2012), 41–42.
29. “It’s not how smart you are”: Pringle, “Origins of Creativity,” 37–43.
1. dwarfs and pygmies: Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621); George Herbert, in Jacula Prudentum (1651); William Hicks, in Revelation Revealed (1659); Shnayer Z. Leiman, “Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants,” Tradition, Spring 1993. Use of the phrase actually seems to go all the way back to the twelfth century.
2. Despite that wiggle room: Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007), 21–23.
3. the great walled city of Uruk: Ibid., 12–13, 23.
4. a tenfold increase in size: Some scholars estimate the population as high as 200,000. For example, see James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 33.
5. specialized professions required a new understanding: Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 24–29.
6. Bread became the product: McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 41–42.
7. Also, the bones reveal: David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), 61.
8. the need for police: Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 26.
9. The inhabitants in each city believed: Marc Van De Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 46–48.
10. “Goods were received by the god of the city”: Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 24, 27.
11. But their ability to go beyond simple requests: Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 240–41.
12. “It’s about as likely”: Susana Duncan, “Nim Chimpsky and How He Grew,” New York, December 3, 1979, 84. See also Hess, Nim Chimpsky, 22.
13. five hundred tribes of indigenous peoples: T. K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1961), 214–15.
14. “No mute tribe”: Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 26.
15. The magnitude of the task: Georges Jean, Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts (New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1992), 69.
16. We are certain of only one other: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 60, 218. Regarding the New World, see María del Carmen Rodríguez Martinez et al., “Oldest Writing in the New World,” Science 313 (September 15, 2006): 1610–14; John Noble Wilford, “Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere,” New York Times, September 15, 2006. These describe a block with a hitherto unknown system of writing that has recently been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico. Stylistic and other dating of the block places it in the early first millennium B.C., the oldest writing in the New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal development to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica.
17. When Thomas Edison invented: Patrick Feaster, “Speech Acoustics and the Keyboard Telephone: Rethinking Edison’s Discovery of the Phonograph Principle,” ARSC Journal 38, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 10–43; Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, 243.
18. the religious community at one temple employed: Jean, Writing: The Story of Alphabets, 12–13.
19. Most of the remaining 15 percent: Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 30–31.
20. For example, humans: Ibid., 30; McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 49.
21. There were also compound signs: Jean, Writing: The Story of Alphabets, 14.
22. Pictograms for a hand and a mouth: Derry and Williams, A Short History of Technology, 215.
23. “tablet houses”: Stephen Bertman, Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (New York: Facts on File, 2003), 148, 301.
24. the tablet houses were able to broaden their scope: McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 47; Albertine Gaur, A History of Writing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 150.
25. By around 2000 B.C.: Sebnem Arsu, “The Oldest Line in the World,” New York Times, February 14, 2006, 1.
26. the Phoenician script: Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 162–67.
27. And from Greece it spread: Derry and Williams, A Short History of Technology, 216.
28. “a covenant with the devil”: Saint Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), completed in A.D. 415.
29. In the first cities of Mesopotamia: Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 11.
30. Young infants: Ann Wakeley et al., “Can Young Infants Add and Subtract?,” Child Development 71 (November–December 2000): 1525–34.
31. The first arithmetic abbreviations: Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from the Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 184–86, 259–60.
32. Each year, after the fields were flooded: Kline, Mathematical Thought, 19–21.
33. able to level a fifty-foot beam: Roger Newton, From Clockwork to Crapshoot (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2007), 6.
34. The idea of law originated: Edgar Zilsel, “The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law,” The Philosophical Review 3, no. 51 (May 1942): 247.
35. the peoples of early Mesopotamia: Robert Wright, The Evolution of God (New York: Little, Brown, 2009), 71–89.
36. first instance of a higher power: Joseph Needham, “Human Laws and the Laws of Nature in China and the West, Part I,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (January 1951): 18.
37. a transcendent god laid down laws: Wright, Evolution of God, 87–88.
38. It decreed, for example: “Code of Hammurabi, c. 1780 BCE,” Internet Ancient History Sourcebook, Fordham University, March 1998, accessed October 27, 2014, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.asp; “Law Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon,” Department of Near Eastern Antiquities: Mesopotamia, the Louvre, accessed October 27, 2014, http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/law-code-hammurabi-king-babylon; Mary Warner Marien and William Fleming, Fleming’s Arts and Ideas (Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005), 8.
39. laws governing … the inanimate world: Needham, “Human Laws and the Laws of Nature,” 3–30.
40. “pay fine and penalty to each other”: Zilsel, “The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law,” 249.
41. “The sun will not transgress”: Ibid.
42. though Kepler wrote occasionally: Ibid., 265–67.
43. “Man seems to be inclined to interpret nature”: Ibid., 279.
44. “Out yonder was this huge world”: Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1979), 3–5.
1. With the conquest of Mesopotamia: Daniel C. Snell, Life in the Ancient Near East (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 140–41.
2. a staple of Greek education: A. A. Long, “The Scope of Early Greek Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, ed. A. A. Long (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
3. “one should expect a chaotic world”: Albert Einstein to Maurice Solovine, March 30, 1952, Letters to Solovine (New York: Philosophical Library, 1987), 117.
4. “the most incomprehensible thing”: Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality” in Ideas and Opinions, trans. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Bonanza, 1954), 292.
5. a magical land of grapevines: Will Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939), 134–40; James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 56–59.
6. the vanguard of the Greek enlightenment: Adelaide Glynn Dunham, The History of Miletus: Down to the Anabasis of Alexander (London: University of London Press, 1915).
7. the first to prove geometric truths: Durant, The Life of Greece, 136–37.
8. “Be patient toward”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929; New York: Dover, 2002), 21.
9. The name Pythagoras: Durant, The Life of Greece, 161–66; Peter Gorman, Pythagoras: A Life (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).
10. “for the honor he gives to number”: Carl Huffman, “Pythagoras,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2011, accessed October 28, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras.
11. In Aristotle’s theory of the world: McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology, 73–76.
12. “the first to write like a professor”: Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers (New York: Vintage, 1998), 54.
13. “the tyranny of common sense”: Ibid., 316.
14. “What everyone believes is true”: Ibid., 55.
15. “it originates in the constitution of the universe”: Ibid.
16. he complained loudly: Ibid., 48.
17. “Mine is the first step”: See George J. Romanes, “Aristotle as a Naturalist,” Science 17 (March 6, 1891): 128–33.
18. “the same things are not proper”: Boorstin, The Seekers, 47.
19. He supplied a lofty reason: “Aristotle,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed November 7, 2014, http://www.iep.utm.edu.
1. A remark by Cicero: Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 179.
2. Cities shrank, the feudal system arose: Kline, Mathematical Thought, 204; J. D. Bernal, Science in History, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 254.
3. a period of hundreds of years: Kline, Mathematical Thought, 211.
4. But by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 180–81.
5. all instruction had to center on religion: Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 74.
6. Without the salutary benefits: Ibid., 77, 89. Huff and George Saliba disagree on the origin and nature of Islamic science, especially the role of astronomy, which has led to a productive and stimulating discussion in the field. For more on Saliba’s argument, see his Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007).
7. China, another grand civilization: For more on the situation, see Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science, 276–78.
8. In India, too: Bernal, Science in History, 334.
9. The revival of science in Europe: Lindberg, Beginnings of Western Science, 203–5.
10. the new value placed on knowledge: J. H. Parry, Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). See especially Part 1.
11. the development of a new institution: Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science, 187.
12. The revolution in education: Lindberg, Beginnings of Western Science, 206–8.
13. scholars would come together: Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science, 92.
14. “Even if the statue”: John Searle, Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 35.
15. don’t have to hunt cats: For more on fourteenth-century conditions, see Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (New York: Free Press, 1985), 29.
16. no one had any idea how to measure time: For a sweeping and readable examination of the history of the concept of time, see David Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1983).
17. the “Merton rule”: Lindberg, Beginnings of Western Science, 303–4.
18. Still, the rule made quite a splash: Clifford Truesdell, Essays in the History of Mechanics (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1968).
19. “Do not worry”: Albert Einstein, in a letter dated January 7, 1943, quoted in Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Albert Einstein: The Human Side; New Glimpses from His Archives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 8.
20. “the book [of nature] cannot be understood”: Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 237–38.
21. Why didn’t they rush: Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things (New York: Knopf, 1992), 84–86.
22. Their technological innovations: James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 180–82.
23. But with their setup: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 46.
24. Within a few years: Louis Karpinski, The History of Arithmetic (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), 68–71; Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1972), 251–65.
25. as European society evolved: Bernal, Science in History, 334–35.
26. Vincenzo came from a noble family: My discussion of Galileo’s life draws heavily from J. L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and from Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
27. “See if he is too small”: Heilbron, Galileo, 61.
28. By the time Galileo got to Padua: Galileo may have been suffering from multiple disenchantments. William A. Wallace argues in his Galileo, the Jesuits, and the Medieval Aristotle (Burlington, Vt.: Variorum, 1991) that Galileo, in preparation for his tenure at Pisa, actually appropriated much of his material from lectures given by Jesuits at the Colegio Romano between 1588 and 1590. Wallace also has a chapter called “Galileo’s Jesuit Connections and Their Influence on His Science” in Mordechai Feingold’s collection Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002).
29. when he got a result that surprised him: Bernal, Science in History, 429.
30. more damage if dropped from higher up: G. B. Riccioli, Almagestum novum astronomiam (1652), vol. 2, 384; Christopher Graney, “Anatomy of a Fall: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Story of G,” Physics Today (September 2012): 36.
31. We must “cut loose from these difficulties”: Laura Fermi and Gilberto Bernardini, Galileo and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1961), 125.
32. a rare instance of Newton’s giving credit: Richard Westfall, Force in Newton’s Physics (New York: MacDonald, 1971), 1–4. In reality, Jean Buridan, who had been Oresme’s teacher in Paris, had stated a similar law within the framework of the Merton scholars, though not nearly as clearly as Galileo. See John Freely, Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2012), 162–63.
33. “an impossible amalgam”: Westfall, Force in Newton’s Physics, 41–42.
34. The idea of a heliocentric universe: Bernal, Science in History, 406–10; McClellan and Dorn, Science and Technology, 208–14.
35. “I think it easier to believe this”: Bernal, Science in History, 408.
36. “one convex and the other concave”: Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Vintage, 1983), 314.
37. “uneven, rough, and full of cavities”: Freely, Before Galileo, 272.
38. The visit seemed to end in a draw: Heilbron, Galileo, 217–20; Drake, Galileo at Work, 252–56.
39. “dismissed the fixed-earth philosophers”: Heilbron, Galileo, 311.
40. what they objected to was a renegade: William A. Wallace, “Gallieo’s Jesuit Connections and Their Influence on His Science,” in Mordechai Feingold, ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 99–112.
41. “I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo”: Károly Simonyi, A Cultural History of Physics (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2012), 198–99.
42. “I find everything disgusting”: Heilbron, Galileo, 356.
43. “it is not good to build mausoleums”: Ibid.
44. “touches not just Florence”: Drake, Galileo at Work, 436.
1. “the Laws of Nature”: Pierre Simon Laplace, Théorie Analytique des Probabilities (Paris: Ve. Courcier, 1812).
2. But had we not been raised in a Newtonian culture: To understand Sir Isaac Newton in the context of upheaval in seventeenth-century England, see Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (New York: Penguin History, 1984), 290–97.
3. “I don’t know what I may seem”: Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 863. This is the authoritative biography of Newton, and I have relied on it accordingly.
4. greater tendency to go into a scientific career: Ming-Te Wang et al., “Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,” Psychological Science 24 (May 2013): 770–75.
5. “One of the strongest motives”: Albert Einstein, “Principles of Research,” address to the Physical Society, Berlin, in Albert Einstein, Essays in Science (New York: Philosophical Library, 1934), 2.
6. “not finally reducible”: Westfall, Never at Rest, ix.
7. For Newton believed that God: W. H. Newton-Smith, “Science, Rationality, and Newton,” in Marcia Sweet Stayer, ed., Newton’s Dream (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1988), 31.
8. “threatening my father and mother”: Westfall, Never at Rest, 53.
9. “herding sheep and shoveling dung”: Ibid., 65.
10. the basis of a whole new scientific tradition: Ibid., 155.
11. “your theory is not crazy enough!”: William H. Cropper, Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 252.
12. The Trinity College election: Westfall, Never at Rest, 70–71, 176–79.
13. Barrow effectively arranged: Richard Westfall, The Life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 71, 77–81.
14. Newton attacked the study of light: See the chapter “A Private Scholar & Public Servant,” in “Footprints of the Lion: Isaac Newton at Work,” Cambridge University Library—Newton Exhibition, accessed October 28, 2014, www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/private_scholar.html.
15. After Newton derived his law of gravity: W. H. Newton-Smith, “Science, Rationality, and Newton,” in Newton’s Dream, ed. Marcia Sweet Stayer (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1988), 31–33.
16. a Bible-based prediction for the end: Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest, 321–24, 816–17.
17. “One nature rejoices”: Paul Strathern, Mendeleev’s Dream (New York: Berkley Books, 2000), 32.
18. “Dissolve volatile green lion”: Westfall, Never at Rest, 368.
19. I felt that pressure: I wrote a memoir about that period in my life; see Leonard Mlodinow, Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life (New York: Vintage, 2011).
20. a “good Newton” and a “bad Newton”: Newton-Smith, “Science, Rationality, and Newton,” 32–33.
21. “Had Newton died in 1684”: Westfall, Never at Rest, 407.
22. “Now I am upon this subject”: Ibid., 405.
23. the momentous idea: Richard Westfall, Force in Newton’s Physics (New York: MacDonald, 1971), 463.
24. For example, employing: As measured in “Parisian feet,” which are 1.0568 of the usual feet.
25. better than one part in three thousand: Robert S. Westfall, “Newton and the Fudge Factor,” Science 179 (February 23, 1973): 751–58.
26. If you sneeze: Murray Allen et al., “The Accelerations of Daily Living,” Spine (November 1994): 1285–90.
27. “The study of nature”: Francis Bacon, The New Organon: The First Book, in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding and Robert Leslie Ellis (London: Longman, 1857–70), accessed November 7, 2014, http://www.bartleby.com/242/.
28. “if the law of forces were known”: R. J. Boscovich, Theiria Philosophiae Naturalis (Venice, 1763), reprinted as A Theory of Natural Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1922), 281.
29. “the most perfect mechanics”: Westfall, Life of Isaac Newton, 193.
30. the prickly Newton believed: Michael White, Rivals: Conflict as the Fuel of Science (London: Vintage, 2002), 40–45.
31. Newton’s reaction to the criticism: Ibid.
32. “These principles I consider”: Westfall, Never at Rest, 645.
33. He ruled the Society with an iron fist: Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Vintage, 1983), 411.
34. “The Chair being Vacant”: Westfall, Never at Rest, 870.
35. levels of lead, arsenic, and antimony: John Emsley, The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 14.
36. even the Catholic astronomers in Italy: J. L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 360.
37. “Here is buried Isaac Newton”: “Sir Isaac Newton,” Westminster Abbey, accessed October 28, 2014, www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton.
1. in the Jewish underground: Joseph Tenenbaum, The Story of a People (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), 195.
2. But in 1786: Paul Strathern, Mendeleev’s Dream (New York: Berkley Books, 2000), 195–98.
3. “all kinds of screwdrivers”: From an interview I taped with my father, c. 1980. I have many hours of those interviews and have used them as a source for the stories I tell here.
4. “one of those bodies into which other bodies”: J. R. Partington, A Short History of Chemistry, 3rd. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1957), 14.
5. What is really being emitted when wood burns: Rick Curkeet, “Wood Combustion Basics,” EPA Workshop, March 2, 2011, accessed October 28, 2014, www.epa.gov/burnwise/workshop2011/WoodCombustion-Curkeet.pdf.
6. It was the world’s first: Robert Barnes, “Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken-Coop of the Muses: The Ancient Library of Alexandria,” in Roy MacLeod, ed., The Library at Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 73.
7. “less talent than my ass”: Henry M. Pachter, Magic into Science: The Story of Paracelsus (New York: Henry Schuman, 1951), 167.
8. I speak of Robert Boyle: The definitive biography of Boyle is Louis Trenchard More, The Life and Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle (London: Oxford University Press, 1944). See also William H. Brock, The Norton History of Chemistry (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 54–74.
9. fell in love with science: More, Life and Works, 45, 48.
10. When you burn a log, Boyle observed: Brock, Norton History of Chemistry, 56–58.
11. Poor Hooke: J. D. Bernal, Science in History, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 462.
12. the invention of new laboratory equipment: T. V. Venkateswaran, “Discovery of Oxygen: Birth of Modern Chemistry,” Science Reporter 48 (April 2011): 34–39.
13. Due to the controversy: Isabel Rivers and David L. Wykes, eds., Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 33.
14. The term itself: Charles W. J. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically About the Age of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 2–6.
15. “This air is of exalted nature”: J. Priestley, “Observations on Different Kinds of Air,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 62 (1772): 147–264.
16. It was left to a Frenchman: For the life of Lavoisier, see Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
17. “agents in nature able to make the particles”: Isaac Newton, Opticks, ed. Bernard Cohen (London, 1730; New York: Dover, 1952), 394. Newton first published Opticks in 1704, but his final thoughts on the matter are represented by the fourth edition, the last revised by Newton himself, which came out in 1730.
18. “founded on only a few facts”: Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier, 47–49.
19. “a fabric woven of experiments”: Ibid., 139. See also Strathern, Mendeleev’s Dream, 225–41.
20. “The republic has no need of scientists”: Douglas McKie, Antoine Lavoisier (Philadelphia: J. J. Lippincott, 1935), 297–98.
21. “merited the esteem of men”: J. E. Gilpin, “Lavoisier Statue in Paris,” American Chemical Journal 25 (1901): 435.
22. The sculptor, Louis-Ernest Barrias: William D. Williams, “Gustavus Hinrichs and the Lavoisier Monument,” Bulletin of the History of Chemistry 23 (1999): 47–49; R. Oesper, “Once the Reputed Statue of Lavoisier,” Journal of Chemistry Education 22 (1945): October frontispiece; Brock, Norton History of Chemistry, 123–24.
23. scrapped during the Nazi occupation: Joe Jackson, A World on Fire (New York: Viking, 2007), 335; “Lavoisier Statue in Paris,” Nature 153 (March 1944): 311.
24. Ironically, in 1913: “Error in Famous Bust Undiscovered for 100 Years,” Bulletin of Photography 13 (1913): 759; and Marco Beretta, Imaging a Career in Science: The Iconography of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science Histories Publications, 2001), 18–24.
25. John Dalton: Frank Greenaway, John Dalton and the Atom (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966); Brock, Norton History of Chemistry, 128–60.
26. Defined as “the disposition to pursue”: A. L. Duckworth et al., “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 1087–101; Lauren Eskreis-Winkler et al., “The Grit Effect: Predicting Retention in the Military, the Workplace, School and Marriage,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (February 2014): 1–12.
27. Dmitri Mendeleev: See Strathern, Mendeleev’s Dream; Brock, Norton History of Chemistry, 311–54.
28. the Bankograph: Kenneth N. Gilpin, “Luther Simjian Is Dead; Held More Than 92 Patents,” New York Times, November 2, 1997; “Machine Accepts Bank Deposits,” New York Times, April 12, 1961, 57.
29. Mendeleev published his table: Dmitri Mendeleev, “Ueber die beziehungen der eigenschaften zu den atom gewichten der elemente,” Zeitschrift für Chemie 12 (1869): 405–6.
1. Robert Hooke sharpened his penknife: Anthony Serafini, The Epic History of Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 1993), 126.
2. about thirty trillion cells: E. Bianconi et al., “An Estimation of the Number of Cells in the Human Body,” Annals of Human Biology 40 (November–December 2013): 463–71.
3. ten million species on our planet: Lee Sweetlove, “Number of Species on Earth Tagged at 8.7 Million,” Nature, August 23, 2011.
4. up to ten insect fragments: “The Food Defect Action Levels,” Defect Levels Handbook, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/guidancedocumentsregulatoryinformation/ucm056174.htm.
5. a serving of broccoli: Ibid.
6. microscopic organisms that live on your forearm: “Microbiome: Your Body Houses 10x More Bacteria Than Cells,” Discover, n.d., accessed October 28, 2014, http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/zen-photo/m/microbiome.
7. Aristotle was an enthusiastic biologist: For Aristotle’s work on biology, see Joseph Singer, A History of Biology to About the Year 1900 (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959); Lois Magner, A History of the Life Sciences, 3rd. ed. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002).
8. people believed that some sort of life force: Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 16.
9. “With this tube”: Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Vintage, 1983), 327.
10. One of the greatest champions: Magner, History of the Life Sciences, 144.
11. “the most ingenious book”: Ruth Moore, The Coil of Life (New York: Knopf, 1961), 77.
12. experiments being mocked on the stage: Tita Chico, “Gimcrack’s Legacy: Sex, Wealth, and the Theater of Experimental Philosophy,” Comparative Drama 42 (Spring 2008): 29–49.
13. One man who didn’t doubt: For Leeuwenhoek’s work on the microscope, see Moore, Coil of Life.
14. “has devised microscopes which far surpass”: Boorstin, The Discoverers, 329–30.
15. “the outcome of my own unaided impulse”: Moore, Coil of Life, 79.
16. “little eels, or worms”: Boorstin, The Discoverers, 330–31.
17. “stuck out two little horns”: Moore, Coil of Life, 81.
18. a handful of his microscopes remain intact: Adriana Stuijt, “World’s First Microscope Auctioned Off for 312,000 Pounds,” Digital Journal, April 8, 2009, accessed November 7, 2014, http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/270683; Gary J. Laughlin, “Editorial: Rare Leeuwenhoek Bids for History,” The Microscope 57 (2009): ii.
19. “most important series”: Moore, Coil of Life, 87.
20. “Anton van Leeuwenhoek considered”: “Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723),” University of California Museum of Paleontology, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html.
21. its Newton was Charles Darwin: For Darwin’s life, I relied largely on Ronald W. Clark, The Survival of Charles Darwin: A Biography of a Man and an Idea (New York: Random House, 1984); Adrian Desmond, James Moore, and Janet Browne, Charles Darwin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Peter J. Bowler, Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
22. “it would have been unfortunate”: “Charles Darwin,” Westminster Abbey, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/charles-darwin.
23. “Everybody is interested in pigeons”: Clark, Survival of Charles Darwin, 115.
24. “God knows what the public will think”: Ibid., 119.
25. “great curiosity about facts”: Ibid., 15.
26. “I saw two rare beetles”: Ibid., 8.
27. “I hate a barnacle”: Charles Darwin to W. D. Fox, October 1852, Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 1489, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-1489.
28. “sufficient to check any strenuous effort”: Clark, Survival of Charles Darwin, 10.
29. “What a fellow that Darwin is”: Ibid., 15.
30. “I have just room to turn round”: Ibid., 27.
31. It was not during the voyage: Bowler, Charles Darwin: The Man, 50, 53–55.
32. “Your situation is above envy”: Charles Darwin to W. D. Fox, August 9–12, 1835, Darwin Correspondence Project, letter 282, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-282.
33. the beaks of the finches: Desmond, Moore, and Browne, Charles Darwin, 25, 32–34.
34. “It at once struck me”: Ibid., 42.
35. “When I am dead”: Bowler, Charles Darwin, 73.
36. the death … of the Darwins’ second child: Adrian J. Desmond, Darwin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 375–85.
37. “We have lost the joy of the Household”: Charles Darwin’s memorial of Anne Elizabeth Darwin, “The Death of Anne Elizabeth Darwin,” accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/death-of-anne-darwin.
38. as alike “as two peas”: Desmond, Moore, and Browne, Charles Darwin, 44.
39. “the extreme verge of the world”: Ibid., 47.
40. “most solemn and last request”: Ibid., 48.
41. “If it be accepted even by one competent judge”: Ibid., 49.
42. “poisoning the foundations of science”: Anonymous [David Brewster], “Review of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” North British Review 3 (May–August 1845): 471.
43. a “foul book”: Evelleen Richards, “ ‘Metaphorical Mystifications’: The Romantic Gestation of Nature in British Biology,” in Romanticism and the Sciences, eds. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Ardine (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 137.
44. “[Wallace] has to-day sent me”: “Darwin to Lyell, June 18, 1858,” in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, 1887), available at http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1887_Letters_F1452/1887_Letters_F1452.2.html, accessed October 28, 2014.
45. Thomas Bell, who on his way out lamented: Desmond, Darwin, 470.
46. “weak as a child”: Desmond, Moore, and Browne, Charles Darwin, 65.
47. “There is grandeur in this view”: Bowler, Charles Darwin, 124–25.
48. “I have read your book with more pain than pleasure”: Clark, Survival of Charles Darwin, 138–39.
49. “Everywhere Darwinism became”: Desmond, Moore, and Browne, Charles Darwin, 107.
50. Gregor Mendel: See Magner, History of the Life Sciences, 376–95.
51. “I have everything to make me happy”: Darwin to Alfred Russel Wallace, July 1881, quoted in Bowler, Charles Darwin, 207.
1. atoms were far too small to be seen: In 2013, scientists were finally able to go a step further and “see” individual molecules reacting. See Dimas G. de Oteyza et al., “Direct Imaging of Covalent Bond Structure in Single-Molecule Chemical Reactions,” Science 340 (June 21, 2013): 1434–37.
2. they are “hypothetical conjectures”: Niels Blaedel, Harmony and Unity: The Life of Niels Bohr (New York: Springer Verlag, 1988), 37.
3. “the willingness to endure a condition”: John Dewey, “What Is Thought?,” in How We Think (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1910), 13.
4. “physics is a branch”: Barbara Lovett Cline, The Men Who Made a New Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 34. See also J. L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 10.
5. Max Planck: Much of the material on Planck comes from Heilbron, Dilemmas of an Upright Man. See also Cline, The Men Who Made a New Physics, 31–64.
6. “disinclined to questionable adventures”: Heilbron, Dilemmas of an Upright Man, 3.
7. “investigate the harmony”: Ibid., 10.
8. “My maxim is always this”: Ibid., 5.
9. But the phenomenon can be explained: Leonard Mlodinow and Todd A. Brun, “Relation Between the Psychological and Thermodynamic Arrows of Time,” Physical Review E 89 (2014): 052102–10.
10. “Despite the great success”: Heilbron, Dilemmas of an Upright Man, 14.
11. “nobody … had any interest whatever”: Ibid., 12; Cline, The Men Who Made a New Physics, 36.
12. there are “certain forces by which”: Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 462.
13. “local motions which … cannot be detected”: Ibid.
14. “A new scientific truth”: The original quote, often misquoted, is “Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist.” It appeared in Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie: Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, 1948), 22. The translation comes from Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 33–34.
15. “Of course, I am aware that Planck’s law”: John D. McGervey, Introduction to Modern Physics (New York: Academic Press, 1971), 70.
16. “Why abandon a belief”: Robert Frost, “The Black Cottage,” in North of Boston (New York: Henry Holt, 1914), 54.
17. “It was as if the ground”: Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes (1949; New York: Open Court, 1999), 43.
18. “the irreproachable student”: Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain (New York: Random House, 1974), 25.
19. “My son is deeply unhappy”: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 45.
20. His first two papers: Ibid., 17–18.
21. “no revolution at all”: Ibid., 31.
22. a letter he wrote to a friend in 1905: Ibid., 30–31.
23. “to find facts which would guarantee”: Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: World Publishing, 1971), 52.
24. the 1913 recommendation: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 382–86.
25. “To Albert Einstein for his services”: Ibid., 386.
26. “an historic understatement”: Ibid.
27. “All these fifty years of pondering”: Jeremy Bernstein, Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 83.
1. “I don’t think we should discourage”: Leonard Mlodinow, Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life (New York: Vintage, 2011), 94–95.
2. “Despite … the apparently complete”: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 383.
3. When Niels Bohr was of high school age: For more on Bohr’s life and science and his relationship with Ernest Rutherford, see Niels Blaedel, Harmony and Unity: The Life of Niels Bohr (New York: Springer Verlag, 1988), and Barbara Lovett Cline, The Men Who Made a New Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 1–30, 88–126.
4. So outlandish did Thomson’s electron seem: “Corpuscles to Electrons,” American Institute of Physics, accessed October 28, 2014, http://www.aip.org/history/electron/jjelectr.htm.
5. In 1941, scientists: R. Sherr, K. T. Bainbridge, and H. H. Anderson, “Transmutation of Mercury by Fast Neutrons,” Physical Review 60 (1941): 473–79.
6. The proton and nucleus were not then known: John L. Heilbron and Thomas A. Kuhn, “The Genesis of the Bohr Atom,” in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, vol. 1, ed. Russell McCormmach (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969), 226.
7. “quite the most incredible event”: William H. Cropper, Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 317.
8. They would find themselves: For more on Geiger, see Jeremy Bernstein, Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 19–20; and Diana Preston, Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 157–58.
9. one hundred times as much as Mount Everest: Actually, it would be a hundred billion tons, for Everest weighs about a billion tons. See “Neutron Stars,” NASA Mission News, August 23, 2007, accessed October 27, 2014, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/neutron_stars_prt.htm.
10. The difficulty of Bohr’s undertaking: John D. McGervey, Introduction to Modern Physics (New York: Academic Press, 1971), 76.
11. “one of the greatest discoveries”: Stanley Jaki, The Relevance of Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 95.
12. “It was regrettable in the highest degree”: Blaedel, Harmony and Unity, 60.
13. Lord Rayleigh, meanwhile: Jaki, Relevance of Physics, 95.
14. “men over seventy”: Ibid.
15. Arthur Eddington: Ibid., 96.
16. What eventually convinced: Blaedel, Harmony and Unity, 78–80; Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg, The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, vol. 1 (New York: Springer Verlag, 1982), 196, 355.
17. With that, no physicist: Blaedel, Harmony and Unity, 79–80.
1. “I am thinking hopelessly about quantum theory”: William H. Cropper, Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 252.
2. “I wish I were a movie comedian”: Ibid.
3. recognized at an early age as brilliant: The definitive biography of Heisenberg is David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Times of Werner Heisenberg (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1992).
4. “In that case you are completely lost”: Ibid., 99–100.
5. “It may be that you know something”: Ibid., 100.
6. Could one create a variant: Olivier Darrigol, From c-Numbers to q-Numbers: The Classical Analogy in the History of Quantum Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 218–24, 257, 259; Cassidy, Uncertainty, 184–90.
7. “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots”: “Failure,” television commercial, 1997, accessed October 27, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc.
8. Consider, for example, Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, accessed November 7, 2014, http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debate4.htm.
9. white supremacy is a “universal feeling”: Abraham Lincoln, address at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854; see Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 256, 266.
10. Max Born would dub it “quantum mechanics”: William A. Fedak and Jeffrey J. Prentis, “The 1925 Born and Jordan Paper ‘On Quantum Mechanics,’ ” American Journal of Physics 77 (February 2009): 128–39.
11. he himself called it “very strange”: Niels Blaedel, Harmony and Unity: The Life of Niels Bohr (New York: Springer Verlag, 1988), 111.
12. “I am now convinced … actual philosophy”: Max Born, My Life and Views (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), 48.
13. he immediately wrote Einstein: Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 22.
14. Like Bohr and Heisenberg, Born: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 198.
15. “I incline to the belief that physicists”: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 463.
16. “My own works are at the moment”: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 203.
17. Pauli became agitated: Charles P. Enz, No Time to Be Brief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 134.
18. “Due to the last work of Heisenberg”: Blaedel, Harmony and Unity, 111–12.
19. He “did his great work”: Walter Moore, A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 138.
20. “The idea of your work springs”: Ibid., 149.
21. “I am convinced that you have made a decisive advance”: Ibid.
22. “I was of three minds”: Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Collected Poems (1954; New York: Vintage, 1982), 92.
23. “what consequences they would unleash”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 442.
24. “felt discouraged, not to say repelled”: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 215.
25. “The more I reflect on the physical portion”: Ibid.
26. more than 100,000 papers: Moore, Life of Erwin Schrödinger, 145.
27. “closer to the secret of the Old One”: Albert Einstein to Max Born, December 4, 1926, in The Born-Einstein Letters, ed. M. Born (New York: Walker, 1971), 90.
28. “Einstein’s verdict … came as a hard blow”: Pais, Subtle Is the Lord, 443.
29. “my solitary little song”: Ibid., 31.
30. “I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified object”: Ibid., 462.
31. “Now we at least have order”: Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 219–20.
32. “I believe that Heisenberg is decent”: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 393.
33. Heisenberg … resented Schrödinger’s departure: Ibid., 310.
34. As his biographer Walter Moore: Moore, Life of Erwin Schrödinger, 213–14.
35. “You will never see it again”: Philipp Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002), 226.
36. What’s left of it resides: Michael Balter, “Einstein’s Brain Was Unusual in Several Respects, Rarely Seen Photos Show,” Washington Post, November 26, 2012.
37. proudly wore his brown uniform: Farmelo, The Strangest Man, 219.
38. Instead, like Heisenberg, his priority: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 306.
39. When the German atom bomb: Cassidy, Uncertainty, 421–29.
1. There is an old brainteaser: Martin Gardner, “Mathematical Games,” Scientific American, June 1961, 168–70.
2. Socrates likened a person: Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (New York: Vintage, 2000), 20–23.