Book description
Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which
popular science writing is judged. Ever since the late 1970s up until
till his death in 2002, his monthly essay in Natural History
and his full-length books bridged the yawning gap between science and
wider culture.
In this fascinating new collection of essays from Natural
History, Gould applied biographical perspectives to the
illumination of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging
from the origins of palaeontology to modern eugenics and genetic
engineering. The essays brilliantly illuminate and elucidate the
puzzles and paradoxes great and small that have fuelled the enterprise
of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders.
Stephen Jay Gould was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and
Professor of Geology at Harvard University, and the Vincent Astor
Visiting Professor of Biology at New York University. During his
illustrious career, his publications included
Ever Since Darwin,
Eight Little Piggies, Life's Grandeur, Questioning the Millenium,
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, Bully for Brontosaurus
and
Wonderful Life. Wonderful Life
won the Science Book Prize for 1991. Stephen Jay Gould died in 2002,
aged 60.
