Book description
The fascinating story of science unfolds in this account of the lives
and extraordinary discoveries of twelve of its greatest figures -
Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Darwin, Poincaré,
Freud, Einstein, Marie Curie and Crick and Watson. Exploring their
impact and legacy with leading scientists of today including Stephen Jay
Gould, Oliver Sacks, Lewis Wolpert, Susan Greenfield, Roger Penrose and
Richard Dawkins, Melvyn Bragg illuminates the core issues of science
past and present, and conveys the excitement and importance of the
scientific quest. Melvyn Bragg's first novel, FOR WANT OF A NAIL, was
published in 1965 and since then his novels have included THE HIRED MAN,
for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, WITHOUT A CITY WALL,
winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, CREDO, THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE
and THE SOLDIER'S RETURN, which was published to huge critical acclaim
in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary Award. He has also written several
works of non-fiction including SPEAK FOR ENGLAND, an oral history of the
twentieth century, RICH, a biography of Richard Burton, ON GIANTS'
SHOULDERS, a history of science based on his BBC radio series, THE
ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH, 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, IN OUR TIME and
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: FINAL CUT. He was born in 1939 and educated at
Wigton's Nelson Thomlinson School and at Oxford where he read history.
He is President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in 1998 he
was made a life peer. He won an Academy Fellowship at the BAFTA
Television Awards in 2010.
