Start reading On Giants' Shoulders on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

 
 
 

Try it free

Sample the beginning of this book for free

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Read books on your computer or other mobile devices with our FREE Kindle Reading Apps.
On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries From Archimedes to DNA
 
 
Share your own customer images

On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries From Archimedes to DNA [Kindle Edition]

Melvyn Bragg (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: £13.43 What's this?
Print List Price: £8.99
Kindle Price: £6.83 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
You Save: £2.16 (24%)
Unlike print books, digital books are subject to VAT.

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition £4.99   -- --
Kindle Edition, 28 Feb 1998 £6.83   -- --
Hardcover --   -- --
Paperback £7.19   -- --

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

So many of us are blessed--or at least affected--by the fruits of science, yet how many of us really understand how we got them? Scientific creativity, like all other kinds, is a product of its times, but we can learn much from looking at the lives of its greatest practitioners; as a sizable side benefit, these lives are often tremendously entertaining. Author and BBC radio host Melvyn Bragg understands this well, and invited many of the great modern interpreters of science to discuss the lives and work of 12 greats from Archimedes to Watson and Crick, and published the cream in On Giants' Shoulders. These are no dry transcripts, though; Bragg has a genius for selecting the most intriguing quotes and selections from both his guests and his subjects and weaving them into his own engrossing narrative. His many novels have tightened up his prose so well that he can make even a discussion of the genesis of relativity a page-turner. He couldn't have invented better material, either: Newton's notorious snobbery, Darwin's almost-naïve sincerity and Lavoisier's turbulent life and untimely death make for compelling stories indeed (one almost wonders how they had time to change the world). His guests, including luminaries such as Lewis Wolpert, Richard Dawkins, Oliver Sacks and Roger Penrose, consistently cut to the heart of their subjects' importance and tie it all up neatly in the last chapter: "Where Are We Now?" An important question, of course, and one that can be better answered from On Giants' Shoulders. --Rob Lightner

Review

'Enchanting ... if anything will unlock the Aladdin’s cave of science to a general readership it is Melvyn Bragg’s approach’

(Lisa Jardine in The Times )
See all Product Description

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 3013 KB
  • Print Length: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (28 Feb 1998)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B000WGHE4W
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #181,733 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

    •  Would you like to give feedback on images?

More About the Author

Melvyn Bragg
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Melvyn Bragg Page

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Customer Reviews

3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
0
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Stephen A. Haines HALL OF FAME TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Bragg demonstrates how a "dabbler" in science can lead one more deeply into the research realm. Using his generalist background, he shows how anyone can appreciate what science can achieve and what it means to us all. A feeling of "being left out piqued his interest and he decided to seek out what he had missed. His technique is one any of us can follow - his interest was piqued by the growing number of works for the general reader. He didn't expect to become an "expert player", but through these works could at least be "at the game".

His study of fifteen key figures in science becomes a summation of what he garnered through reading and interviews. Bragg's long journalism career gave him an entry key and many insights in dealing with the "giants" and their interpreters. Having discovered several in this role, he has formulated a survey that will be valuable to many. Using a technique combining the interview with the works of good writers, he's created a readable, cogent overview of what science is and what it means. From Archimedes through Newton, Darwin and Curie to Watson and Crick you are given a variety of views of the key figures. The importance of each is stated clearly, mixed with what is known of their characters and background.

In his conclusion, titled "Where Are We Now?", Bragg makes an excellent summary of the impact of these seminal thinkers. As an observer, he claims to have produced a "map" of scientific thinking. The map is incomplete, but evokes an image of science as a "human exercise intent on examining the meaning and purpose as much as the structure of life today". It's a fine summary conclusion to his outstanding effort to help bring science to anyone wishing to learn its values. The future, his interviewees stress, will be one of further, deeper discoveries. His "giants" are in reality the ideas they developed, not in any way the scientists themselves. From Newton's irascibility to Darwin's diffidence, all these figures retain a strongly variant human identity. If nothing else, this book imparts the idea that science belongs to us all and can be furthered by anyone interested enough to undertake investigating unanswered questions. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
3 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Bragg have written on great scientists' works and lives in a novel fashion. This book is very readable, and easy to get some rough ideas. But do not expect any serious matters in this books.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  9 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
An Inspiration to Scientists & Science Students Alike 21 Oct 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
On Giants' Shoulders is a tribute to twelve scientists who, in the last two thousand five hundred years, changed the world both as we perceive it and as we live in it. Their minds, their lives, their struggles, their colleagues and rivals are explored and unravelled by some of today's leading scientists. Taken together, their stories and discoveries constitute a guide to the history of science.

A bestseller in England, this book combines engaging portraits of these figures with accessible discussions of their most important discoveries. Those profiled are Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Darwin, Poincaré, Freud, Curie, Einstein, Francis Crick and James Watson. Their stories are enhanced by insights provided by interviews with some of today's leading scientists, including Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, John Gribbin, Sir Roger Penrose, Sir Martin Rees and Oliver Sacks.

Based on interviews broadcast over British radio, this book differs from the radio series in the ampler amount of material contained, as it was possible to include more material from the original transcripts, which had been mercilessly pruned for the thirty-minute radio programmes.

Melvyn Bragg is an acclaimed journalist and the host of the popular BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week. He is also the author of seventeen novels and five works of non-fiction, including biographies of Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier.

Reviewed by Azlan Adnan. Formerly Business Development Manager with KPMG, Azlan is currently Managing Partner of Azlan & Koh Knowledge and Professional Management Group, an education and management consulting practice based in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. He holds a Master's degree in International Business and Management.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
British scientists talk about their heroes 20 Aug 2003
By Erika Mitchell - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This book is a collection of write-ups of BBC radio show programs about the heroes of British scientists. Each chapter considers a prominent scientist of the past, such as Archimedes, and then presents a synopsis of interviews and discussions with modern-day British academic scientists about the featured scientist of the past. Through the interviews, we gain an understanding of the opinions of the modern-day scientists concerning their academic heroes, mixed in with some of the facts concerning their lives and discoveries. The book is thick with opinions and philosophy compared to the amount of factual information it contains about the featured scientists. If you are interested in what modern British scientists have to say about some famous scientists of the past, then this book is for you. But if you're looking for a book where you can learn something about the famous scientists themselves or a summary of their discoveries, you should look elsewhere.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
On Giants Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries 15 Jun 2000
By Anita L Ondrusek - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
In a search for science biographies to add to our college's science library collection, I first purchased On Giants' Shoulders based upon a favorable review from Choice (Jan. 2000) that characterized the book as ". . . a well-written volume that can be understood by anyone." Science biographies can be very technical or very dry and, consequently, not for the non-specialist. Also, scholarly biographies that cover a collection of scientists usually follow a theme (such as women in science or great minds in biology), so I was taken with the idea of a chronology of scientific discoveries through a biographical approach. Since its arrival in the library, I have read the book twice. Its appeal lies in its conversational style (the text is partly based on radio interviews with famous scientists) and recurrent themes addressed from many different points of view - a technique reminiscent of the book The Ghost in the Atom (Cambridge University Press, 1986). One reviewer refers to the book's style as "gossip" and likens the presentation of events to a soap opera. Why not? Science is a world full of intrigue and scientists should be portrayed as having a human side as well as an intellectual side. The book is a wonderful way to introduce young people to the realm of science, and I have ordered personal copies for children of my friends and relatives.
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Popular Highlights

 (What's this?)
&quote;
The role of religion is to interpret how the sc orld is, not to tell us how the world is, &quote;
Highlighted by 3 Kindle users
&quote;
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. &quote;
Highlighted by 3 Kindle users

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject









i.e., each title must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. GB Privacy Statement Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. GB Delivery Information Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. GB Returns & Exchanges