Books
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Book Review : De ontdekkers van de hemel, David Baneke (ISBN 9789035136885, Prometheus)
Bought this book after reading about it in the magazine of the Nederlandse Natuurkunde Vereniging. It is written by a Dutch historian specialised in the history of science. The title of the book refers to the famous book of Harry Mulish, de ontdekking van de hemel. It describes astronomy in The Netherlands in the nineteenth…
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In search of Schrodinger’s cat, John Gribbin (ISBN 978-0-552-12555-0, Transworld Books)
I had this book lying around for a long time (it first came out in 1984 but I read the edition from 2012) and finally decided to give it a go. Mainly because of John Gribbin’s and the book having a bit of a reputation as a classic. I have already read many popular books…
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Mensen op Mars. Een manmoedige poging, Joris van Casteren (ISBN 9789044628722, Prometheus)
Mensen op Mars is het verhaal achter het Mars One project van 2 Nederlandse ingenieurs om tegen 2027 4 mensen op Mars te krijgen. Het was een non profit organisatie die als doel had de plannen voor een bemande Mars missie versneld te realiseren omdat de NASA en andere officiële ruimtevaart organisaties te weinig ambitie…
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On the Origin of Time : Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory : Thomas Hertog (ISBN 978-1804991121, Ballantine Books)
I borrowed this book from my father in law who was very enthousiast about it. The book already made it to the New York Times bestseller list. Thomas Hertog is professor theoretical Physics and cosmology at the KUL in Leuven, Belgium and was recently a guest in the radio program Voorproevers with Annemie Peeters to…
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Het ontstaan van de tijd, Thomas Hertog (ISBN 9789077445365, Lannoo)
Ik kreeg dit boek te leen van mijn schoonvader die er wildenthousiast over was. Het is origineel uitgegeven in het Engels en al New York Times bestseller geweest. Thomas Hertog is professor theoretische natuurkunde en cosmologie aan de KUL en was te gast bij Annemie Peeters in het programma Voorproevers naar aanleiding van dit boek.…
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The Book of Gutsy Women, Hilary & Chelsea Clinton (ISBN 9781471172175, Simon & Schuster)
I came across this book a long time ago, not long after it was first published in 2020. This was near the end of Trump’s first presidency and after the debacle of Hilary’s election campaign in 2016. The book is basically a collection of short articles about women that inspired Hilary and Chelsea Clinton. The…
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Lise Meitner. A Life in Physics, Ruth Lewin Sime (ISBN 978-0-520-20860-5, University of California Press)
This is the second biography of Lise Meitner I read. After reading the biography by Patricia Rife I was at first hesitant to also go and read this book by Ruth Lewin Sime. But after finishing the book I have to say it was well worth every minute. Where the biography of Patricia Rife focused…
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Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, Patricia Rife (ISBN 978-0817637323, Birkhäuser)
A very nice biography about one of the ‘forgotten’ women of science. I came across a reference to this book somewhere and decided to read it as part of my ‘atomic’ theme. It also fits nicely into a series of books I am reading about women scientists. I had read the excellent ‘The making of…
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A Tour of the Calculus, David Berlinski (ISBN 978-0-679-74788-8, Vintage Books)
A Tour of the Calculus is a strange and unique book. According to text on the back it is likely to become a classic as Gödel, Escher, Bach. But I doubt that very much. The book was written in 1995 and so far I haven’t come across it in any list of classics. I also…
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Through rugged ways to the stars, Harlow Shapley (ISBN 9781124074719, Charles Scribner’s Sons)
This is the autobiography of Harlow Shapley, the man who discovered size of the milky way and the place of our sun in it. Shapley considered the discovery that our sun was not in the center of the milky way as his most important contribution to our world view because it was more or less…
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