Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry
Patrick Coffey
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Description for Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry
Hardback. Like any other human endeavor, chemistry was built by real people, with all their strengths and faults. Cathedrals of Science describes its construction-the intersection of science and personality that transformed chemistry, with its chemists struggling for understanding, squabbling over scientific credit, and making moral choices about chemical warfare, totalitarianism, and nuclear weapons. Num Pages: 400 pages, 26 black and white halftones, 31 line illustrations. BIC Classification: 3JH; 3JJ; PDX; PN. Category: (G) General (US: Trade); (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 235 x 160 x 26. Weight in Grams: 694.
In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's ... Read more
In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's ... Read more
Product Details
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc United States
Number of pages
416
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2008
Condition
New
Weight
707g
Number of Pages
400
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780195321340
SKU
V9780195321340
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-8
About Patrick Coffey
Coffey spent most of his career in the design of instruments for chemical research and was a co-founder of a number of scientific instrument companies. In 2003, he began research into the history of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.
Reviews for Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry
Coffey aims at unveiling how different personal characteristics led to differences in scientific styles. How friendships, camaraderie, enmities and rivalries played a role in shaping developments in science, in strengthening scientific and social networks, in articulation of research groups, in the establishment of codes of conduct between senior researchers and young students, and in responding to various political context, often ... Read more