Helicon Books

This book has two major parts to it: the biographies, which are pretty much standard fare; and a preface liv pages long that tries to cover the content and history of all of science. The latter portion of the book is pretty much a failure and adds little to the collected biographies. It just is not possible to cover all that ground in so few pages, and the editors' wind up with a rather unpalatable recital.
The biographies themselves, usually consisting of a few paragraphs, do form a useful compendium, and many of them are well written and interesting. However, some errors appear, as they almost inevitably must, in any work of this kind. One whopper is their report that Carnot actually discovered the formula for the efficiency of an ideal heat engine. While he knew that some formula involving temperature must exist, he did not know about absolute temperatures, and did not discover the formula.

The most offensive thing to me was the comparative space given to Freud and Jung (many paragraphs, plus portraits), neither of whom were scientists, and that given to William Shockley (two short paragraphs, no portrait), whose invention of the transistor changed our world so dramatically. One sentence in Shockley's bio is about the transistor, and two slanderous ones on his contributions in genetics. That's it.

Really, now. Jung's psychological system included astrology, spiritualism, and various types of ESP. His totally bogus notion of synchronicity is actually anti-scientific. Why is he here, while Madam Blavatsky is not?

Farnesworth, who invented TV, is entirely omitted from the compilation, which is absolutely disgraceful. And to forget Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, is careless. The inclusion of Spinoza and Wittgenstein who were philosophers, and definitely not scientists, can only be described as an error. And including Hahnemann, the quack that invented homeopathy, is ludicrous.… (meer)