Publisher's Synopsis
I read a calculation of the average number of hours of work that go into the average Nobel Prize winning bid. On average, it comes to 41 years of work, 300 days a year, 12 hours a day! And this is the work of a genius mind, at peak level, or very close to it.
The sheer aggregate mental output that this implies cannot, thankfully, be grasped by most people; it seems like it is perilously close to infinity. In this book, you will attempt to end up with the names of not one, or two, but many hundreds of these inspiring men and women. All of us dream of great things and wonderful visions in our future, but only a select few of us can create the future. Scientists use their own ingenuity coupled with decades of hard work to help the human race take quantum leaps into a sci-fi world of technological convenience. The scientists whose lives we celebrate in this book have made seminal contributions to quantum physics, industrial chemistry, organ transplants, and many more fields! There are many tropes related to personalities in the world of science in literature and pop culture. There is the mad scientist, the geeky scientist who falls in love with someone who is more noted for looks than for brains, the absent-minded scientist...the list goes on. Let's meet some of the people behind these stereotypes in this book. The social impact that even one successful scientist can have on society is not often calculated. In fact, so great is this impact (and it has a compounding effect from generation to generation) that most people find it almost impossible to quantify just how much these special men and women mean to all of us. The Nobel Prize is the biggest recognition for the greatest minds that have lived over the past century or so. If you work in science or aspire to work in the field of science and technology, the Nobel Prize is the Holy Grail that proves that you have made it to the top of the mountain. Talented scientists see the world we live in, and use their genius brains to figure out how it all works, and create quantum leaps in human knowledge and achievement to take the human race forward and beyond what we thought was possible. The history of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, medicine, and botany - these are all based on the hard work and sacrifices made by the men and women of science who spent hours, days, weeks, and years of their lives on them. This book celebrates the lives and work of many different categories of scientists: -- The early pioneers like Sir Isaac Newton, who saw deeper and further than other scientists of their time, and propounded scientific theories through blinding flashes of insight, that are taught to children in all schools today-- The geniuses from a century ago, like Madame Curie, who blended theory and experiment in a stream of creativity that transformed our world and existence
-- Medical pioneers from Sir Joseph Lister to the many legends who have made breakthroughs in their research on the diseases that afflict human beings, and made it possible for all of us to have a better quality of life
-- The many physicists who contributed bricks that built a solid foundation of quantum theory, from Dirac to Einstein, and from Bohr to Planck Most of the scientists whose names are covered in this book are Nobel Prize winners in different fields; I have deliberately included a mix of the old and the new, so that you will discover the names of new scientists, just as you celebrate the lives and work of the ones whom you already knew about.
