“In a witty and captivating manner, Wiggins and Wynn bring life to the personalities behind some of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries. They remind us that imagination, skepticism, and dispute are as integral to the scientific process as are the mathematical formulae used to describe our hypotheses or the histograms used to demonstrate our findings.”
—Steven Goldfarb, physicist, ATLAS Experiment, CERN
“A delightful canter through the history of science―with a difference. By focusing on the lives of the scientists, their interactions, their conflicts, and their love interests, rather than simply their achievements, Wiggins and Wynn bring the subject to life in a new and fascinating way.”
—David K. Love, FRAS, author of Kepler and the Universe
Science research is supposed to be orderly and deliberate, with every scientist adhering closely to the
strictures of the scientific method. But there is a problem. Scientists are humans whose preconceptions, prejudices, and egos contribute to narrow thinking, rivalry, and even subterfuge. According to professors Wiggins and Wynn, science advances despite the failings of scientists to be fair. In their new book, they tell a history of science through brief biographies of famous men and women. It is a story in which the women, such as Lise Meitner and Rosiland Franklin, do not always get the credit they deserve. The result is an entertaining soap opera of science, featuring Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Hubble, Hawking, and others.
Readers will appreciate numerous photos of key scientists and enjoy entertaining illustrations by veteran cartoonist Sidney Harris. A good addition to any popular science collection.
— Rick Roche, Booklist
Professors Arthur W. Wiggins and Charles M. Wynn, Sr., have given the world of science enthusiasts a great surprise. The Human Side of Science is a highly readable gift which will prove addictive to anyone from a bright high school freshmen to a mature and informed seeker after scientific knowledge and wisdom. I picked it up with the idea that I would scan it and write a popular review in a day or two. I could not put it down. Not all professionals in the scientific fields will feel as gratified with the authors’ delightful work as I am, but for me, even though it did not bring loads of new information about science, this book proved to be an exciting discovery. The quality of the writing, the vividness of the metaphors, and the idea of presenting all the essential scientific turning points during the last 2500 years through personal biographies was a very pleasant surprise.
The authors have given a comical twist to a clever composition in the common language of everyday life. This book will provide a contemporary education in the world of scientific discovery to anyone with the good sense to spend a couple of days with it. Four hundred scientists who achieved the highest level of fame during the last two and a half millennia, from Athens 500 BCE to Chicago in 2016 CE, are described here. Their biographies offer an intriguing narrative of the most surprising twists and turns that most of us, even professional scientists, did not know. How many ordinary readers knew that Aristotle started his school, the Lyceum, because he was mad at Plato and his Academy, and had a completely different approach to science? Who knew that Isaac Newton was an ordained minister who was pretty much incapable of social relationships, and in his later life left physics and theoretical science for alchemy, astrology, and spiritism? Have you ever thought that Mr. Bose had more to do with the Higgs Boson than Mr. Higgs, whose name everybody knows? Did you know that the actress, Hedy Lamar, was a famous scientist who received a patent for inventing a torpedo guidance system because she wanted to fight Hitler’s Nazi regime?
This book is so filled with such intriguing turns of the road of science that you might think for an unconscious moment that it was written by Sherlock Holmes. You will simply have a lot of fun with this wonderful read. It is all about relationship, cooperation, contention, connection, and some knock-down-drag-out fights in the community of science. Some of the greatest scientists were people full of grace, while others were mean and nasty characters. One of the wonderful things that became apparent to me in reading this volume is the fact that women made just as great a contribution to the world of science as men, and usually did it with a sturdy “no nonsense strength” in knowledge and power, and a more wholesome spirit.
-- J. Harold Ellens PhD, pastor, professor, US Army Colonel, psychotherapist, journal editor
"These humans are so, so, so, well,. . . human."
-- HANGH (Highly Advanced Next Generation Humanoid)
—Steven Goldfarb, physicist, ATLAS Experiment, CERN
“A delightful canter through the history of science―with a difference. By focusing on the lives of the scientists, their interactions, their conflicts, and their love interests, rather than simply their achievements, Wiggins and Wynn bring the subject to life in a new and fascinating way.”
—David K. Love, FRAS, author of Kepler and the Universe
Science research is supposed to be orderly and deliberate, with every scientist adhering closely to the
strictures of the scientific method. But there is a problem. Scientists are humans whose preconceptions, prejudices, and egos contribute to narrow thinking, rivalry, and even subterfuge. According to professors Wiggins and Wynn, science advances despite the failings of scientists to be fair. In their new book, they tell a history of science through brief biographies of famous men and women. It is a story in which the women, such as Lise Meitner and Rosiland Franklin, do not always get the credit they deserve. The result is an entertaining soap opera of science, featuring Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Hubble, Hawking, and others.
Readers will appreciate numerous photos of key scientists and enjoy entertaining illustrations by veteran cartoonist Sidney Harris. A good addition to any popular science collection.
— Rick Roche, Booklist
Professors Arthur W. Wiggins and Charles M. Wynn, Sr., have given the world of science enthusiasts a great surprise. The Human Side of Science is a highly readable gift which will prove addictive to anyone from a bright high school freshmen to a mature and informed seeker after scientific knowledge and wisdom. I picked it up with the idea that I would scan it and write a popular review in a day or two. I could not put it down. Not all professionals in the scientific fields will feel as gratified with the authors’ delightful work as I am, but for me, even though it did not bring loads of new information about science, this book proved to be an exciting discovery. The quality of the writing, the vividness of the metaphors, and the idea of presenting all the essential scientific turning points during the last 2500 years through personal biographies was a very pleasant surprise.
The authors have given a comical twist to a clever composition in the common language of everyday life. This book will provide a contemporary education in the world of scientific discovery to anyone with the good sense to spend a couple of days with it. Four hundred scientists who achieved the highest level of fame during the last two and a half millennia, from Athens 500 BCE to Chicago in 2016 CE, are described here. Their biographies offer an intriguing narrative of the most surprising twists and turns that most of us, even professional scientists, did not know. How many ordinary readers knew that Aristotle started his school, the Lyceum, because he was mad at Plato and his Academy, and had a completely different approach to science? Who knew that Isaac Newton was an ordained minister who was pretty much incapable of social relationships, and in his later life left physics and theoretical science for alchemy, astrology, and spiritism? Have you ever thought that Mr. Bose had more to do with the Higgs Boson than Mr. Higgs, whose name everybody knows? Did you know that the actress, Hedy Lamar, was a famous scientist who received a patent for inventing a torpedo guidance system because she wanted to fight Hitler’s Nazi regime?
This book is so filled with such intriguing turns of the road of science that you might think for an unconscious moment that it was written by Sherlock Holmes. You will simply have a lot of fun with this wonderful read. It is all about relationship, cooperation, contention, connection, and some knock-down-drag-out fights in the community of science. Some of the greatest scientists were people full of grace, while others were mean and nasty characters. One of the wonderful things that became apparent to me in reading this volume is the fact that women made just as great a contribution to the world of science as men, and usually did it with a sturdy “no nonsense strength” in knowledge and power, and a more wholesome spirit.
-- J. Harold Ellens PhD, pastor, professor, US Army Colonel, psychotherapist, journal editor
"These humans are so, so, so, well,. . . human."
-- HANGH (Highly Advanced Next Generation Humanoid)
