Mildred Dresselhaus was a pioneer of nanoscience, a champion for women in STEM, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. Weinstock shows that Dresselhaus's was not an easy path: her childhood was impoverished; her graduate advisor felt educating women was a waste of time. She went on to become the first female professor at MIT, and identified key properties of carbon forms leading to applications that have...

"In December 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved a milestone in human history: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi, the father of the nuclear age. But as David N. Schwartz shows in this groundbreaking biography, Fermi's impact goes well beyond this epochal event. With his theory of beta decay and his development of quantum statistics, Fermi revolutionized modern physics. Straddling the...

This photobiography of Albert Einstein publishes to coincide with the year that marks the 100th anniversary of what has been described as Einstein's "miraculous year" and the 50th anniversary of his death. In 1905 Einstein published three important papers describing ideas that changed science forever and eventually had an effect on much of modern life. The most famous of these ideas was his theory of relativity, which took a startling new approach...

"When her husband's car is found abandoned and on fire--in the middle of a rainstorm--police suspect that Eve Roth had something to do with it. After all, her husband was suspended from the University of Iowa for inappropriate conduct with a student, and who else but an atmospheric physicist could incinerate a car in a downpour? But Eve has no idea why her husband disappeared. She's desperate to find him, both for herself and her beloved, disabled...

This biography profiles the life and times of German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, whose contributions to the field earned him a Nobel Prize.

Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet, in the final decades of his life, he was ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends. As writer David Bodanis explains here, this stunning downfall can be traced to Einstein's earliest successes and to personal qualities...

"Revered biographer Ray Monk solves the enigma of Robert Oppenheimer's life and personality and brilliantly illuminates his contribution to the revolution in twentieth-century physics. In Robert Oppenheimer, Ray Monk delves into the rich and complex intellectual life of America's most fascinating and elusive scientist, the father of the atomic bomb. As a young professor at Berkeley, the wealthy, cultured Oppenheimer finally came into his own as a...

This inventive new biography of the legendary physicist examines his complex and contradictory nature-from brilliant scientist to charming lothario and life of the party-in 99 vignettes based on intriguingly different particles.