When Fay Ajzenberg-Selove became a nuclear physicist, the number of women in the field could be counted on one hand. In this engaging memoir, Fay Ajzenberg-Selove writes candidly about her difficult journey to international recognition in physics. She is frank about the ways being a woman has made a difference in her opportunities and choices as a scientist--and how, by being a woman, she has made a difference in the world of physics. Ajzenberg-Selove came to America at the age of 15 after narrowly escaping the Nazi takeover of France. She had planned to become an engineer like her father, but switched to physics after she was told the only engineering jobs open to women were in drafting: Marie Curie's example proved to her that women could do physics. Her first attempt at graduate work at Columbia University was a disaster, but she was sturck with the intellectual beauty of the field. After taking a Ph.D. in physics at University of Wisconsin, she did post-doctoral work with Thomas Lauritsen at the California Institute of Technology, where she began writing the first of a series of major review papers on the nuclear spectroscopy of the light nuclei, a subject of fundamental importance to nuclear physics, astrophysics, and applied physics. She continued this work and experimental research for thirty-eight years while teaching at Boston University, Haverford College, and the University of Pennsylvania. During her early career, Ajzenberg-Selove was shielded by her male mentors from experiencing much of the discrimination directed against women in science. Her simultaneous battles to become a tenured professor and to overcome breast cancer opened her eyes and confirmed her as a feminist. The lay reader and the scientist alike will be fascinated by Ajzenberg-Selove's clear portrayal of her interlinked lives as physicist, teacher, wife of particle physicist, Walter Selove, and a woman who relishes both competition and friendship in a male-dominated field. An invaluable book for anyone contemplating a career in science.

In the pantheon of modern Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann is a giant. One of the founding fathers of the State of Israel and its first president, he was also a president of the World Zionist Organization, and an eminent chemist, for whom Israel's renowned Weizmann Institute of Science was named. Yet, until now, there has never been an authoritative biography of Weizmann that removed the layers of myth obscuring our image of the man. Both a personal portrait of a fascinating man and a far-reaching history of the Jews in the modern world, this book, written by one of America's leading authorities on Jewish history, delves into the factors that shaped Weizmann's personality and worldview. Though the book focuses on the making of Weizmann as a Zionist leader, it also lays the foundations for understanding his extraordinary achievements as a scientist. This volume, the first of two that will cover his entire career, ends when, at the age of 40, Weizmann is thrust onto the center stage of world politics as a major negotiator for the Balfour Declaration.

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life. A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems. Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think&-- based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols&--laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate. There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.

Eugene P. Wigner, indisputedly one of the world's greatest physicists of the twentieth century, recounts the breathtaking story of his singular life. Dr. Wigner's wining of the Nobel Prize crowned a lifetime of achievements in physics - achievements that profoundly affect our understanding of science today. His enormous contributions to the Manhattan Project and his insights into quantum physics stand as hallmarks of his incomparable talent. But equally important are his musings on his long and uniquely fascinating life. This memoir, a fruitful collaboration between Eugene Wigner and writer Andrew Szanton, reveals a story by turns endearing, painful, and ultimately triumphant. A witness to many of the changes of the twentieth century, Wigner grew up amid the political turmoil of Hungary. He later experienced the Berlin of the early 1930s as Hitler rose to power. During World War II, he took an active role in the Manhattan Project, the building of the world's first atomic bomb. In his recollections, he conveys the exultation of observing the first successfully controlled nuclear chain reaction. Eugene Wigner's friends and acquaintances comprise a Who's Who of twentieth-century scientists, and the book is replete with their vivid, candid, and amusing portrayals. Having enjoyed many years working with Albert Einstein, he paints an engaging portrait of that most famous of geniuses. He also sketches distinctive pictures of the trio of his fellow Hungarians: Leo Szilard, one of the first men to dream seriously about the atom bomb; Johnny von Neumann, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the century; and Edward Teller, the prime architect of the hydrogen bomb. This is the first major bookever written about Eugene P. Wigner. It makes a significant contribution to the history of the Manhattan Project and to the history of nuclear physics. But in a much larger sense, physics is only its backdrop. The real story is that of an extraordinary man and his unforgettable life.

The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia is the authoritative single-volume reference work on people, both living and dead. In addition to its thousand or more pages of A-Z entries, the book offers an invaluable Ready Reference section with lists of political leaders and rulers, Nobel Prizewinners, patron saints, sports champions and many more. Acclaimed on its first publication in 1994 as a new kind of biographical reference book, the Encyclopedia is now established as a reliable source of information on over 26,000 people, fully cross-referenced. The book's international coverage and devotion to important figures - both historical and contemporary - in science and the arts as well as sports and popular personalities make it unique. This Second Edition has been comprehensively updated and supplemented with new entries.

Never Lose Your Nerve! chronicles the ups and downs of a Nobel Laureate's life. Professor Alan J Heeger was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 together with Professor Alan G MacDiarmid and Professor Hideki Shirakawa. Filled with humor, this book tells Professor Heeger's story -- his love for his family, especially how his wife's love has always been his guiding light, his progress from a young student to an eminent scientist, his passion for the theatre and its impact on his science, his adventures as a successful entrepreneur, and his personal losses. Many think of scientists as risk-adverse individuals but Professor Heeger shows the absolute necessity of risk in research and that scientists are, in fact, risk-addicted, as taking the first, risky step into unfamiliar territory is a step in the right direction towards creativity and great discoveries. Never lose your nerve and you will be rewarded. Life is an exciting adventure and this book clearly demonstrates it, and is for those who are looking to impact others.'Perhaps the greatest pleasure of being a scientist is to have an abstract idea, then to do an experiment (more often a series of experiments is required) that demonstrates the idea was correct; that is, Nature actually behaves as conceived in the mind of the scientist. This process is the essence of creativity in science. I have been fortunate to have experienced this intense pleasure many times in my life.'Alan J Heeger

"Evelyn Fox Keller trained as a theoretical physicist at a time when women didn't "do physics." Unable to find a supportive advisor, she moved into the new field of molecular biology just getting off the ground. After receiving her doctorate, she returned to physics but then took another swerve, joining a small interdisciplinary effort to develop mathematical models of biological systems. This work led to her appointment to a special position as Professor of Mathematics and Humanities at Northeastern University. When second-wave feminism arrived in the 1960s, it changed the lives of everyone in its path. It certainly changed Keller's, leading her beyond the borders of science altogether. Eventually she began to think of herself as a dual citizen of the proverbial two cultures―science and humanities. The trajectory was hardly straightforward, nor was it conducive to building a conventional career, or even getting a job. Now in hindsight, after an illustrious career and having published fourteen books, Keller reflects on her life, influences, successes and struggles along her trailblazing path as a scientist and feminist." -- From publisher's website

"This tale of great achievements and great disappointments offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between scholarship and political sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lazăr Șăineanu (1859-1934), linguist and folklorist, was a pioneer in his native Romania, seeking out the popular elements in culture along with high literary ones. He was the first to publish a study of Yiddish as a genuine language, and he uncovered Turkish features in Romanian language and customs. He also made an index of hundreds of Romanian folktales. Yet when he sought Romanian citizenship and a professorship, he was blocked by powerful figures who thought Jews could not be Romanians and who fancied the origins of Romanian culture to be wholly Latin. Faced with anti-Semitism, some of his friends turned to Zionism. Instead he tried baptism, which brought him only mockery and shame. Hoping to find a polity to which he could belong, Șăineanu moved with his family to Paris in 1900 and became Lazare Sainéan. There he made innovative studies of French popular speech and slang, culminating in his great work on the origins of that language. Once again, he was contributing to the development of a national tongue. Even then, while welcomed by literary scholars, Sainéan was unable to get a permanent university post. Though a naturalized citizen of France, he felt himself a foreigner, an "intruder," into his old age"--

""Impromptu Man captures the remarkable impact of a singular genius, J.L. Moreno, whose creations-the best-known being psychodrama-have shaped our culture in myriad ways, many unrecognized. The record will be set straight for all time by this can't-put-down biography, a tribute by Jonathan D. Moreno to his father's masterly legacy." -DANIEL GOLEMAN, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ J.L. Moreno (1889-1974), the father of psychodrama, was an early critic of Sigmund Freud, wrote landmark works of Viennese expressionism, founded an experimental theater where he discovered Peter Lorre, influenced Martin Buber, and became one of the most important psychiatrists and social scientists of his time. ?? A mystic, theater impresario and inventor in his youth, Moreno immigrated to America in 1926, where he trained famous actors, introduced group therapy, and was a forerunner of humanistic psychology. As a social reformer, he reorganized schools and prisons, and designed New Deal planned communities for workers and farmers. Moreno's methods have been adopted by improvisational theater groups, military organizations, educators, business leaders, and trial lawyers. His studies of social networks laid the groundwork for social media like Twitter and Facebook. ?? Featuring interviews with Clay Shirky, Gloria Steinem, and Werner Erhard, among others, original documentary research, and the author's own perspective growing up as the son of an innovative genius, Impromptu Man is both the study of a great and largely unsung figure of the last century and an epic history, taking readers from the creative chaos of early twentieth-century Vienna to the wired world of Silicon Valley. Jonathan D. Moreno, called the "most interesting bioethicist of our time" by the American Journal of Bioethics, is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. "--

Even before he wrote his bestselling book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , historian Ilan Pappe was a controversial figure in Israel. In Out of the Frame , he gives a full account of his break with conventional Israeli scholarship and its consequences. Growing up in a conventional Israeli community influenced by the utopian visions of Theodor Herzl, Pappe was barely aware of the Nakbah in his high school years. Here, he traces his journey of discovery from the whispers of Palestinian classmates to his realization that the "enemy's" narrative of the events of 1948 was correct. After producing his Ph.D at Oxford University based on recently declassified documents in the early 1980s, he returned to Palestine determined to protect the memory of the Nakbah and struggle for the rectification of its evils. For the first time, he gives the details of the formidable opposition he faced in Israel, including death threats fed by the media, denunciations by the Knesset, and calls for him to be sacked from his post at Haifa University. This revealing work, written with dignity and humor, highlights Israel's difficulty in facing up to its past and forging a peaceful, inclusive future in Palestine.

This book is the first devoted to modern biology s innovators and iconoclasts: men and women who challenged prevailing notions in their fields. Some of these scientists were Nobel Prize winners, some were considered cranks or gadflies, some were in fact wrong. The stories of these stubborn dissenters are individually fascinating. Taken together, they provide unparalleled insights into the role of dissent and controversy in science and especially the growth of biological thought over the past century. Each of the book s nineteen specially commissioned chapters offers a detailed portrait of the intellectual rebellion of a particular scientist working in a major area of biology--genetics, evolution, embryology, ecology, biochemistry, neurobiology, and virology as well as others. An introduction by the volume s editors and an epilogue by R. C. Lewontin draw connections among the case studies and illuminate the nonconforming scientist s crucial function of disturbing the comfort of those in the majority. By focusing on the dynamics and impact of dissent rather than on winners who are credited with scientific advances, the book presents a refreshingly original perspective on the history of the life sciences. Scientists featured in this volume: Alfred Russel Wallace Hans Driesch Wilhelm Johannsen Raymond Arthur Dart C. D. Darlington Richard Goldschmidt Barbara McClintock Oswald T. Avery Roger Sperry Leon Croizat Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards Peter Mitchell Howard Temin Motoo Kimura William D. Hamilton Carl Woese Stephen Jay Gould Thelma Rowell Daniel S. Simberloff "

The stories of nineteen scientists--some famous, some forgotten--who stubbornly challenged assumptions and icons in the life sciences This book is the first devoted to modern biology's innovators and iconoclasts: men and women who challenged prevailing notions in their fields. Some of these scientists were Nobel Prize winners, some were considered cranks or gadflies, some were in fact wrong. The stories of these stubborn dissenters are individually fascinating. Taken together, they provide unparalleled insights into the role of dissent and controversy in science and especially the growth of biological thought over the past century. Each of the book's nineteen specially commissioned chapters offers a detailed portrait of the intellectual rebellion of a particular scientist working in a major area of biology--genetics, evolution, embryology, ecology, biochemistry, neurobiology, and virology as well as others. An introduction by the volume's editors and an epilogue by R. C. Lewontin draw connections among the case studies and illuminate the nonconforming scientist's crucial function of disturbing the comfort of those in the majority. By focusing on the dynamics and impact of dissent rather than on "winners" who are credited with scientific advances, the book presents a refreshingly original perspective on the history of the life sciences. Scientists featured in this volume: Alfred Russel Wallace Hans Driesch Wilhelm Johannsen Raymond Arthur Dart C. D. Darlington Richard Goldschmidt Barbara McClintock Oswald T. Avery Roger Sperry Leon Croizat Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards Peter Mitchell Howard Temin Motoo Kimura William D. Hamilton Carl Woese Stephen Jay Gould Thelma Rowell Daniel S. Simberloff

"The autobiography of Martin Karplus, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2013, describes the journey from his childhood in Vienna, his escape to Switzerland in 1938 shortly after Hitler's entrance into Austria, his education in New England and California, and scientific career which took him to England, Illinois, Columbia, Strasbourg, and Harvard. The author's optimistic outlook and faith in himself made it possible for him to overcome difficulties in his research and to develop methods in several different fields of science that asked questions to teach him and others something not known before. Paralleling his efforts in science, Martin Karplus enjoyed a life-long interest in cooking, working at some of the best restaurants in France and Spain, and in photography, holding numerous exhibitions of his work around the world"--

The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists is a survey of contemporary social theory that focuses on the thinkers themselves. In original essays especially commissioned for this volume, leading experts and practitioners examine the life and work of 13 major theorists such as Elias, Baudrillard, Giddens, and Butler. Includes 13 original essays by leading scholars on major contemporary social theorists. Covers key figures such as Elias, Goffman, Foucault, Habermas, Giddens, Bourdieu, and Butler. Essays include biographical sketches, the social and intellectual context, and the impact of the thinker's work on social theory generally. Includes bibliographies of the theorist's most important works as well as key secondary works. Can be used in conjunction with The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists , edited by George Ritzer, for a complete reference source in social theory.

What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences , editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers. From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.

What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences , editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers. From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.

The President of the Federation of American Scientists describes his work in the areas of disarmament and human rights, and recounts interactions with international leaders

Irena Koprowska's autobiography illuminates the struggles of a young immigrant woman to combine family responsibilities and a demanding medical career. Irena Koprowska's autobiography chronicles the life and struggles of an immigrant woman who successfully pursued a career while raising a family. In the process, she became an award-winning physician, professor, and research pioneer at a time in history when it was believed a woman's place was in the home. Born in Warsaw in 1917, Irena Koprowska was married, pregnant, and a physician by the age of twenty-two. Forced to flee the Nazis, first in Poland and then in France, she fled to Brazil in 1940. Four years later she immigrated to the United States. Unable to speak English, she started her academic career as a volunteer at the Department of Pathology at Cornell University Medical College. During the years of her subsequent Research Fellowships at Cornell University Medical College, she worked with George N. Papanicolaou, inventor of the Pap smear. The two co-authored a case report of the earliest diagnosis of lung cancer by a sputum smear. Eight years later, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology at State University of New York Downstate Medical College and went on to become the first woman physician to become a full professor at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital (now known as Hahnemann University) in Philadelphia. Later she joined the faculty of Temple University Medical School where, upon her retirement in 1987, she became Professor Emerita. She was recognized as "Woman Physician of the Year" by a Gold Medicus award of the Polish American Society in 1977 and received the Papanicolaou Award of the AmericanSociety of Cytology in 1985.

Every city and every state needs a Richard Ravitch. In sixty years on the job, whether working in business or government, he was the man willing to tackle some of the most complex challenges facing New York. Trained as a lawyer, he worked briefly for the House of Representatives, then began his career in his family's construction business. He built high-profile projects like the Whitney Museum and Citicorp Center but his primary energy was devoted to building over 40,000 units of affordable housing including the first racially integrated apartment complex in Washington, D.C. He dealt with architects, engineers, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians, union leaders, construction workers, bankers, and tenants—virtually all of the people who make cities and states work. It was no surprise that those endeavors ultimately led to a life of public service. In 1975, Ravitch was asked by then New York Governor Hugh Carey to arrange a rescue of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, a public entity that had issued bonds to finance over 30,000 affordable housing units but was on the verge of bankruptcy. That same year, Ravitch was at Carey's side when New York City's biggest banks said they would no longer underwrite its debt and he became instrumental to averting the city's bankruptcy. Throughout his career, Ravitch divided his time between public service and private enterprise. He was chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 1979 to 1983 and is generally credited with rebuilding the system. He turned around the Bowery Savings Bank, chaired a commission that rewrote the Charter of the City of New York, served on two Presidential Commissions, and became chief labor negotiator for Major League Baseball. Then, in 2008, after Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal and New York State was in a post-financial-crisis meltdown, Spitzer's successor, David Paterson, appointed Ravitch Lieutenant Governor and asked him to make recommendations regarding the state's budgeting plan. What Ravitch found was the result of not just the economic downturn but years of fiscal denial. And the closer he looked, the clearer it became that the same thing was happening in most states. Budgetary pressures from Medicaid, pension promises to public employees, and deceptive budgeting and borrowing practices are crippling our states' ability to do what only they can do—invest in the physical and human infrastructure the country needs to thrive. Making this case is Ravitch's current public endeavor and it deserves immediate attention from both public officials and private citizens.