DISCOVERIES, THE(ISBN=9780375713453)

　　In this enlightening collection, novelist and science writer Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) has assembled the original works announcing 25 of the world's pioneering scientific breakthroughs, coupling them with original essays to create a meditation on the "exhilaration of discovery." The lineup is a who's who of 20th-century science-Einstein, Planck, Fleming-ranging from quantum physics to astronomy, medicine, genetics and chemistry. Lightman is at his best when humanizing the scientists behind the world's major discoveries; he offers a stunning recollection from Caltech in the 1970s, when he was a graduate student, of Richard Feynman virulently attacking a world-weary Werner Heisenberg, author of the uncertainty principle, for a terrible lecture and, implicitly, for having worked on an atom bomb for the Nazis. Unfortunately, the heart of the collection, the landmark papers themselves, will prove to be stultifying and unintelligible for readers not well versed in science. Still, Lightman's elegant accompanying narratives are strong enough to carry the book. In an age when science is expanding at a faster clip than ever before, from supercomputing to cloning, this collection is a well-timed reminder of the humanity that surrounds and indeed drives scientific discovery. B&w photos.

Introduction
A Note on Numbers
1.THE QUANTUM
　"On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum," by Max Planck (1900)
2.HORMONES
　"The Mechanism of Pancreatic Secretion," by William Bayliss and Ernest Starling (1902)
3.THE PARTICLE NATURE OF LIGHT
　"On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light," by Albert Einstein (1905)
4.SPECIAL RELATIVITY
　"On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,"by Albert Einstein (1905)
5.THE NUCLEUS OF THE ATOM
　"The Scattering of a and B Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom," by Ernest Rutherford (191 l)
6.THE SIZE OF THE COSMOS
　"Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud,"by Henrietta Leavitt (1912)
7.THE ARRANGEMENT OF ATOMS 1N SOLID MATTER
　"Interference Phenomena with Rontgen Rays,"by W.Friedrich, P.Knipping, and M.von Laue (1912)
8.THE QUANTUM ATOM
　"On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules,"by Niels Bohr (1913)
9.THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN NERVES
　"On the Humoral Transmission of the Action of the Cardiac Nerve," by Otto Loewi (1921)
10.THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
　"On the Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics," by Werner Heisenberg (1927)
11.THE CHEMICAL BOND
　"The Shared-Electron Chemical Bond," by Linus Paul ing (1928)
12.THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
　"A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae," by Edwin Hubble (1929)
13.ANTIBIOTICS
　"On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium,with Special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B.Influenzae,"by Alexander Fleming (1929)
14.THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF ENERGY IN LIVING ORGANISMS
　"The Role of Citric Acid in Intermediate Metabolism in Animal Tissues," by Hans Krebs and W.A.Johnson (1937)
15.NUCLEAR FISSION
　"Concerning the Existence of Alkaline Earth Metals Resulting from Neutron Irradiation of Uranium," by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann (1939); and "Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction," by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch (I 939)
16.THE MOVABILITY OF GENES
　"Mutable Loci in Maize," by Barbara McClintock (1948)
17.THE STRUCTURE OF DNA
　"Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids," by James D.Watson and Francis H.C.Crick (1953); and "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate,"by Rosalind E.Franklin and R.G.Gosling (1953)
18.THE STRUCTURE OF PROTEINS
　"Structure of Haemoglobin" by Max F.Perutz, M.G.Rossmann,Ann F.Cullis, Hilary Muirhead, Georg Will, and A.C.T.North (1960)
19.RADIO WAVES FROM THE BIG BANG
　"A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s,"by Arno A.Penzias and Robert W.Wilson (1965); and
　"Cosmic Black-Body Radiation," by Robert H.Dicke,P.James E.Peebles, Peter G.Roll, and David T.Wilkinson (1965)
20.A UNIFIED THEORY OF FORCES
　"A Model of Leptons," by Steven Weinberg (1967)
21.QUARKS: A TINIEST ESSENCE OF MATTER
　"Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering,"by M.Breidenbach, J.I.Friedman, H.W.Kendall, E.D.Bloom, D.H.Coward, H.DeStaebler, J.Drees, L.W.Mo, and R.E.Taylor (1969)
22.THE CREATION OF ALTERED FORMS OF LIFE
　"Biochemical Method for Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40," by David A.Jackson,Robert H.Symons, and Paul Berg (1972)
EPILOGUE
Notes
Abridgments of Papers
Acknowledgments
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index