Eureka!: Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World
by Leslie Alan Horvitz
Category: Science

The common language of genius: Eureka! While the roads that lead to breakthrough scientific discovery canbe as varied and complex as the human mind, the moment of insightfor all scientists is remarkably similar. The word "eureka!",attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, has cometo express that universal moment of joy, wonder-and even shock-atdiscovering something entirely new. In this collection of twelvescientific stories, Leslie Alan Horvitz describes the drama ofsudden insight as experienced by a dozen distinct personalities,detailing discoveries both well known and obscure. From Darwin,Einstein, and the team of Watson and Crick to such lesser knownluminaries as fractal creator Mandelbrot and periodic tablemastermind Dmitri Medellev, Eureka! perfectly illustrates LouisPasteur's quip that chance favors the prepared mind. The book alsodescribes how amateur scientist Joseph Priestley stumbled onto theexistence of oxygen in the eighteenth century and how televisionpioneer Philo Farnsworth developed his idea for a TV screen whileplowing his family's Idaho farm.