Nature not mocked : places, people and science / Peter Day.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Day, P. (Peter), 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science.

Technology.

Physical Description:

262 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Imperial College Press, [2005]

Summary:

We often forget that the science underpinning our contemporary civilization is not a marmoreal edifice. On the contrary, at each moment in its development over past centuries, it grew and advanced through the efforts of individuals and the institutions they created. As Director of the Royal Institution and its Davy Faraday Research Laboratory throughout the 1990s, the author had a unique vantage point to observe how places and people condition the way science has been shaped in the past and continues to be today. The author's background as a practicing solid state chemist, with a lively concern for issues engaging public awareness of science, has led him to recognize and celebrate, not just the remarkable contributions and unusual lives of past scientific heroes like Rumford and Faraday, but also their present day successors. Over the years, this insight has resulted in a wide variety of articles and essays, spread through many publications; a selection of these is collected in this book.

The tapestry of science does not just consist of facts uncovered about the natural world and the laws that connect them. As perhaps the finest product of the human mind, its substance and direction are strongly conditioned (some might even say determined) by the people drawn to take part in it and the environments in which they work. This book is an edited collection of essays on aspects of the lives of some famous (as well as less well-known) scientists and places where science is carried out, combined with popular accounts of some of the science the author himself has been involved in. Although it focuses on the Royal Institution and some of those associated with it, it ranges more widely to embrace some contemporary scientists known personally to the author, each of whom had an unusual and distinctive career. At the same time, the science itself, while at the cutting edge, is placed firmly in its historical perspective. The essays are collected into themes, each of which is prefaced and put in context by a short introduction.

Contents:

Part 1 Temples of Science 1

Chapter 1 The Royal Institution: Then and Now 3

The Beginnings 3

Creating and Communicating Science 6

The Philosopher's Tree: How Faraday Created Today's Royal Institution 18

A Special Friday Night 40

Christmas Lectures in Japan 42

Chapter 2 Conversation Rooms 45

Chapter 3 The Institut Laue-Langevin: A Crucible of European Sciences 58

Part 2 Some Past Masters 77

Chapter 4 Count Rumford's European Travels 79

Chapter 5 Humphry Davy's Quest for Research Funding 96

Chapter 6 Michael Faraday as a Materials Scientist 105

Part 3 Some Folks You Meet 113

Chapter 7 Christian Klixbull Jorgensen (1931-2001) 115

Inorganic Spectroscopist Extraordinaire 115

'Whereof Man Cannot Speak' 126

Klixbull Jorgensen and the Language of Science 130

Chapter 8 Olivier Kahn (1943-1999) 141

A (too) Brief Life 141

Molecules and Magnets: The Legacy of Olivier Kahn 144

Chapter 9 Fred Dainton: Scientist and Public Servant 151

Part 4 Molecules, Solids and Properties 155

Chapter 10 Magnets from Molecules 158

The Pre-History 158

The Chemistry of Magnets 166

Magnets Without Metals 172

Chapter 11 Mixed-Valence Compounds 175

Chapter 12 Superconductors Past, Present, and Future 188

Chapter 13 Room at the Bottom 209

Chapter 14 Molecular Information Processing: Will It Happen? 216

Chapter 15 Connecting Atoms with Words 237

Low-Dimensional Materials 237

Linking Molecules into Solids 238

Exotic Properties 240

Magnetics for Chemists 242

A Magnetic History 244

Learning the Rules of the Game 247.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1860945767

OCLC:

68890465