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    Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World
    Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World
    Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World
    Ebook238 pages4 hours

    Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World

    By Leslie Alan Horvitz

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    About this ebook

    The common language of genius: Eureka!
    While the roads that lead to breakthrough scientific discovery can be as varied and complex as the human mind, the moment of insight for all scientists is remarkably similar. The word "eureka!", attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, has come to express that universal moment of joy, wonder-and even shock-at discovering something entirely new. In this collection of twelve scientific stories, Leslie Alan Horvitz describes the drama of sudden insight as experienced by a dozen distinct personalities, detailing discoveries both well known and obscure. From Darwin, Einstein, and the team of Watson and Crick to such lesser known luminaries as fractal creator Mandelbrot and periodic table mastermind Dmitri Medellev, Eureka! perfectly illustrates Louis Pasteur's quip that chance favors the prepared mind. The book also describes how amateur scientist Joseph Priestley stumbled onto the existence of oxygen in the eighteenth century and how television pioneer Philo Farnsworth developed his idea for a TV screen while plowing his family's Idaho farm.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWiley
    Release dateJul 1, 2002
    ISBN9780471233411
    Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World
    Author

    Leslie Alan Horvitz

    Leslie Alan Horvitz is the author of over twenty novels including The Memory Hole, The Donors, Double Blinded, The Dying, and Causes Unknown. Editions of his books have been published in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Brazil, and the UK. He is also the author of several works of nonfiction, most recently The Essential Book of Weather Folklore, The Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide, The Weather Tracker, Night Sky TrackerEureka: Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed the World, and Understanding Depression with Dr. Raymond DePaulo of Johns Hopkins University. In 1996 Horvitz collaborated with Dr. Joseph McCormick and his wife, Dr. Susan Fisher-Hoch, both noted epidemiologists, on Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC. “Level 4” refers to a biohazard unit in the Centers for Disease Control where scientists examine some of the most lethal pathogens known to man. Horvitz has covered a variety of business, political, and social topics for general interest magazines including articles on money laundering, international organized crime, financial mergers, global trade, and fraud in biomedical research.

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