Cambridge Scientific Minds

Since the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century, a great number of distinguished scientists and mathematicians have been associated with Cambridge University. Cambridge Scientific Minds is a unique account of some of the University’s most eminent thinkers over the last 400 years, including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and James Clerk Maxwell. While the rapid establishment during the Newtonian era of a series of professorships for mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, botany, geology, and geometry marked the University’s scientific coming of age, this volume’s chronological balance reflects on the increasing importance of science in the institution’s recent history. Chapters on Paul Dirac, Alan Turing, Joseph Needham, and Stephen Hawking, among others, represent the recent intellectual efflorescence at Cambridge. Personal memoirs and historical essays, written by leading historians, scientists, and Nobel Laureates, make Cambridge Scientific Minds as enjoyable to read as it is accessible. Peter Harman is Professor of the History of Science at Lancaster University. He has published primarily on the history of physics and natural philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries, the period from Newton to Maxwell. His previous books include Energy, Force and Matter (Cambridge, 1982), The Investigation of Difficult Things (Cambridge, 1992), After Newton: Essays on Natural Philosophy (Variorum, 1993), The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, volume 1 (Cambridge, 1990), volume 2 (Cambridge, 1995). Simon Mitton studied physics at the University of Oxford, and received a PhD in radio astronomy at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is Senior Fellow at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. This is his tenth book.