By any measure, Hans Mark was a warrior of the Cold War. Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1929, he spent his early childhood in Vienna before escaping the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 and eventually emigrating to the United States, settling in New York. He graduated from high school in 1947, went west to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a PhD in physics from MIT. His work in nuclear engineering soon set him on a path that would be shaped by aeronautics, space exploration, and national defense. It was through advanced technology that Mark believed the United States could win the Cold War. In An Anxious Peace , Mark recounts in detail his life as a twentieth-century “rocket man.” Here is the inside story of one who—in a career spanning more than six decades—was on the technological front line, from long-range bombers to the space shuttle. Along the way, Mark reveals many never-before-told stories from life at NASA and more. Readers will revel in learning the background behind the decision to place a plaque on Pioneer 10 , a space probe that the NASA Ames Research Center designed to fly past the asteroid belt, Jupiter, and Saturn to collect data and images. Mark tells how he, Carl Sagan, and NASA insider John Naugle kept secret the addition of the now iconic 6x9-inch aluminum “message from humanity” until the probe had been launched. To this day Mark is pushing for a manned mission to Mars. One thing is sure: Hans Mark has left a major impact on academic and scientific communities that will be felt for decades to come.

This book is a biography of one of the most famous and influential living mathematicians, Peter Lax. He is virtually unique as a preeminent leader in both pure and applied mathematics, fields which are often seen as competing and incompatible. Although he has been an academic for all of his adult life, his biography is not without drama and tragedy. Lax and his family barely escaped to the U.S. from Budapest before the Holocaust descended. He was one of the youngest scientists to work on the Manhattan Project. He played a leading role in coping with the infamous "kidnapping" of the NYU mathematics department's computer, in 1970. The list of topics in which Lax made fundamental and long-lasting contributions is remarkable: scattering theory, solitons, shock waves, and even classical analysis, to name a few. His work has been honored many times, including the Abel Prize in 2005. The book concludes with an account of his most important mathematical contributions, made accessible without heavy prerequisites. Reuben Hersh has written extensively on mathematics. His book with Philip Davis, The Mathematical Experience, won the National Book Award in science. Hersh is emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico.

A portrait of the twentieth-century scientific community and a memoir of the scientist who was at the forefront of particle physics.