I’ve read a lot of popular science books, so I thought I would list some of the ones that I most enjoyed. They are mostly Physics based, but there are a couple that are more general and even one that I promise doesn’t mention Physics at all, so if you are stuck for interesting reading or hate reading but desperately need something to put on your personal statement, some of these could be useful!
What is life?
Erwin Schrodinger
This book is actually a recording of a series of public lectures that Schrodinger gave in the early 1940s. It might seem like a strange book for him to have published, because he was a physicist not a biologist, most famous for his thought experiment about a quantum cat in a box. However this book proved to be incredibly significant in the history of biology. In its first chapters Schrodinger lays out a theoretical framework for what genetic material should look like and how it should act, and when these things were subsequently discovered, both Watson and Crick acknowledged that Schrodinger’s lectures had been a major source of inspiration.
The workings of DNA only take up the first part of the book though. The next chapters describe Schrodinger’s definition for life- that it is ‘continually drawing from its environment negative entropy’ and goes on to talk about the thermodynamics of life which is fascinating!
This whole book is nicely and accessibly written and goes into depth quantifying his hypotheses. The last chapter outlines Schrodinger’s own beliefs about consciousness, whether we have free will and if we can survive death in some form. A very interesting little read.
The Hidden Reality
See how many there are?!?
Brian Greene
This is the book on this list that I have re-read the most times. I love Brian Greene and would read anything he’d written, no matter what it was -‘The Elegant Universe’ is another great one. He is a brilliant writer that really thinks about his audience— pointing out places where you can skip the in-depth explanation on a first read for example.
He always provides just enough background information on the stories and characters of the scientists to give it colour and not to detract or take too long a detour away from the facts, a balance which I find rare in popular science writing.
This particular book details different theories about parallel universes, and the evidence for and against them. He describes these fantastic ideas but also focuses on if they can be tested and the nature of scientific measurement and experiment. That’s not even to mention the use of talking flies to demonstrate that there aren’t an infinite number of different positions in a room and the imagined chat bringing Newton up to speed with gravity these days.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough! I even took it on holiday to Venice to read on the beach.
Thinking Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
This is the promised book that entirely has no Physics in it on this list!
It is written by the guy that won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for work in psychology about how we make decisions and judgements. It talks about a model of the human mind split up into two systems, System 1 which is completely irrational and works instinctively and System 2 which is who we think we are- the one that rationalises and articulates judgements and choices.
It describes how System 2 can trick us into thinking that we are being totally rational when really nothing could be further from the truth, and provides plenty of case studies, experiments and tests for the reader so that you cannot simply laugh at the idiots taking part in the studies and think ‘I would never be that stupid!’
In how easily it can trick you, it is a scary and thought-provoking book. In addition, it also describes in depth the experimental techniques used and the problems encountered, which, if you are unfamiliar with psychological studies or a little sceptical of social sciences, makes it an eye-opening read.
Mr Tompkins in Paperback
George Gamow
A famous scientist in his own right and one of the first to work on and accept the Big Bang theory, Gamov was born in the Soviet Union, which he and his wife once gloriously tried to escape from by kayaking across the Black Sea with supplies of chocolate and two bottles of brandy. (Not that this is mentioned in the book.)
This book takes the oft-repeated problem with Quantum Physics—that because it only happens on scales too small to see it, it is completely counterintuitive to us—and seeks to give people some realisation of what it would be like to live in world where quantum effects occur. Mr. Tompkins is a fictional bank clerk who attends physics lectures (some of which are also printed in the book) and then dreams about the strange world of Quantum Physics. The book is full of short stories in which we meet brakemen on trains who control the ageing of his passengers, tiny universes that take half an hour to return books thrown off a planet, songs about the steady state theory of the universe and a quantum tiger. It is sweet and funny and there is even a little love-story thrown in.
Ignorance, how it drives science
Stuart Firestein
This book comes from a course on ignorance that Firestein started in Columbia University to open his student’s eyes to the fact that the progression of science isn’t ‘facts and rules. It’s black cats in dark rooms.’ The book talks about how ignorance is important, different kinds of ignorance and finishes with four case studies from different areas of science that show how scientists today are working with ignorance.
It is a great book, well written with lots of anecdotes and is quite witty. This is quite a short, quick read, and broken up into different sections, so if you are looking to find out more about science but not a fan of a novel-length book, this one might be for you.
The Science of His Dark Materials
John and Mary Gribbin.
I put this book down because it is probably the first popular science book that I read, or at least the first one that I remember and that I would still re-read today. ‘His Dark Materials’ were my favourite books for a long time growing up and this book might be why I am studying Physics at university and not English, but I will admit that it is probably aimed at too young an audience for most people reading this blog.
John Gribbin is another of my favourite science writers though- you should try ‘The Universe: A biography’, or ‘Schrodinger’s Kittens and the Search for Reality’.
The fundamental constants, a mystery of physics
Written by Harald Fritzsch and translated by Gregory Stodolsky.
This book is written as an imagined dialogue between Einstein, Newton and Haller who is a made-up modern day physicist. It deals with the constants in Physics and how they show what we know about the universe and also what we don’t know yet.
Why are the constants set to these values? Were they set at random in the Big Bang or can they be derived? Are they even constant?
The book talks about some fascinating Physics and has the added advantage of occasional lines like:
“Einstein: That’s a good idea. I’m getting hungry hearing about all these mysterious natural constants, a nice steak would be great.”
We need to talk about kelvin
Marcus Chown
Each chapter in this book focuses on a different everyday phenomena, like how you can simultaneously see through a window and see your reflection in it and links them to very interesting Physics. It covers the usual things in popular physics books- quantum mechanics, the double slit experiment, Pauli exclusion but also nuclear fusion in the sun, entropy and inflation. They are all neatly explained. Each chapter is mostly self-contained so you can skip to concepts or puzzles that are interesting to you.
The space race, the battle to rule the heavens
Deborah Cadbury
This book is a history of the cold war, but it focuses on the characters and doesn’t take sides. The main protagonists are the German Wernher von Braun and Soviet Sergei Korolev who were both obsessed with the idea of spaceflight and whose dreams were both swept up in politics. I suppose it is not really a science book, as it focuses on the daring escapes, trials and lives of the scientists involved in the space race, but it is a brilliant read!
So, there we go. I hope that was an interesting mix. For some reason I happen to be really picky about popular science books with many of the hugely hyped and well-reviewed ones leaving me totally cold, so you can be sure these came from a long long list that didn’t make the cut! Perhaps I will do a later blog featuring my least favourite…
Just to finish off on the book talk, lined up for the rest of this term, I have stolen ‘Shadows of the Mind’ by Roger Penrose (which I promised I would read in another blog) from Alex, and I am also planning to take ‘The Golem’ and’ Bad Science’ out of the Imperial library. From my sister (studying Biology) I have sneaked ‘DNA’ by James Watson to take me up to date with what happened in Biology in the 70 or so years since Schrodinger!
I’ve just finished ‘Out of Print’, which was an overview of journalism, from its beginnings to what may happen in the future now that the internet is messing newspaper’s business models up. I was really looking forward this book, but it actually turned out pretty disappointing. Some of the history of the press is fascinating, but facts presented in this book were mostly the number of copies sold and the amounts of money made, neither of which I found interesting enough to retain for a thousand old newspapers.
Happy reading!
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
