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| List of Illustrations | |
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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Out of the Dark Ages | |
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| Renaissance Men | |
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| Emerging from the dark | |
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| The elegance of Copernicus | |
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| The Earth moves! | |
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| The orbits of the planets | |
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| Leonard Digges and the telescope | |
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| Thomas Digges and the infinite Universe | |
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| Bruno: a martyr for science? | |
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| Copernican model banned by Catholic Church | |
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| Vesalius: surgeon, dissector and grave-robber | |
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| Fallopio and Fabricius | |
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| William Harvey and the circulation of the blood | |
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| The Last Mystics | |
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| The movement of the planets | |
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| Tycho Brahe | |
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| Measuring star positions | |
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| Tycho's supernova | |
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| Tycho observes comet | |
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| His model of the Universe | |
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| Johannes Kepler: Tycho's assistant and inheritor | |
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| Kepler's geometrical model of the Universe | |
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| New thoughts on the motion of planets: Kepler's first and second laws | |
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| Kepler's third law | |
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| Publication of the Rudolphine star tables | |
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| Kepler's death | |
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| The First Scientists | |
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| William Gilbert and magnetism | |
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| Galileo on the pendulum, gravity and acceleration | |
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| His invention of the 'compass' | |
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| His supernova studies | |
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| Lippershey's reinvention of the telescope | |
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| Galileo's developments thereon | |
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| Copernican ideas of Galileo judged heretical | |
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| Galileo publishes Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems | |
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| Threatened with torture, he recants | |
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| Galileo publishes Two New Sciences | |
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| His death | |
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| The Founding Fathers | |
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| Science Finds its Feet | |
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| Rene Descartes and Cartesian co-ordinates | |
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| His greatest works | |
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| Pierre Gassendi: atoms and molecules | |
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| Descartes's rejection of the concept of a vacuum | |
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| Christiaan Huygens: his work on optics and the wave theory of light | |
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| Robert Boyle: his study of gas pressure | |
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| Boyle's scientific approach to alchemy | |
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| Marcello Malpighi and the circulation of the blood | |
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| Giovanni Borelli and Edward Tyson: the increasing perception of animal (and man) as machine | |
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| The 'Newtonian Revolution' | |
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| Robert Hooke: the study of microscopy and the publication of Micrographia | |
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| Hooke's study of the wave theory of light | |
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| Hooke's law of elasticity | |
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| John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley: cataloguing stars by telescope | |
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| Newton's early life | |
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| The development of calculus | |
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| The wrangling of Hooke and Newton | |
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| Newton's Principia Mathematica: the inverse square law and the three laws of motion | |
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| Newton's later life | |
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| Hooke's death and the publication of Newton's Opticks | |
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| Expanding Horizons | |
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| Edmond Halley | |
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| Transits of Venus | |
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| The effort to calculate the size of an atom | |
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| Halley travels to sea to study terrestrial magnetism | |
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| Predicts return of comet | |
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| Proves that stars move independently | |
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| Death of Halley | |
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| John Ray and Francis Willughby: the first-hand study of flora and fauna | |
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| Carl Linnaeus and the naming of species | |
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| The Comte de Buffon: Histoire Naturelle and thoughts on the age of the Earth | |
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| Further thoughts on the age of the Earth: Jean Fourier and Fourier analysis | |
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| Georges Couvier: Lectures in Comparative Anatomy; speculations on extinction | |
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| Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: thoughts on evolution | |
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| The Enlightenment | |
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| Enlightened Science I: Chemistry catches up | |
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| The Enlightenment | |
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| Joseph Black and the discovery of carbon dioxide | |
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| Black on temperature | |
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| The steam engine: Thomas Newcomen, James Watt and the Industrial Revolution | |
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| Experiments in electricity: Joseph Priestley | |
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| Priestley's experiments with gases | |
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| The discovery of oxygen | |
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| The chemical studies of Henry Cavendish: publication in the Philosophical Transactions | |
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| Water is not an element | |
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| The Cavendish experiment: weighing the Earth | |
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| Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: study of air; study of the system of respiration | |
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| The first table of elements; Lavoisier renames elements; he publishes Elements of Chemistry | |
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| Lavoisier's execution | |
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| Enlightened Science II: Progress on all fronts | |
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| The study of electricity: Stephen Gray, Charles Du Fay, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Coulomb | |
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| Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta and the invention of the electric battery | |
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| Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis: the principle of least action | |
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| Leonhard Euler: mathematical description of the refraction of light | |
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| Thomas Wright: speculations on the Milky Way | |
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| The discoveries of William and Caroline Herschel | |
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| John Michell | |
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| Pierre Simon Laplace, 'The French Newton': his Exposition | |
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| Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford): his life | |
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| Thompson's thoughts on convection | |
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| His thoughts on heat and motion | |
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| James Hutton: the uniformitarian theory of geology | |
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| The Big Picture | |
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| The 'Darwinian Revolution' | |
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| Charles Lyell: His life | |
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| His travels in Europe and study of geology | |
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| He publishes the Principles of Geology | |
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| Lyell's thoughts on species | |
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| Theories of evolution: Erasmus Darwin and Zoonomia | |
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| Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: the Lamarckian theory of evolution | |
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| Charles Darwin: his life | |
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| The voyage of the Beagle | |
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| Darwin develops his theory of evolution by natural selection | |
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| Alfred Russell Wallace | |
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| The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species | |
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| Atoms and Molecules | |
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| Humphry Davy's work on gases; electrochemical research | |
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| John Dalton's atomic model; first talk of atomic weights | |
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| Jons Berzelius and the study of elements | |
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| Avogadro's number | |
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| William Prout's hypothesis on atomic weights | |
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| Friedrich Wohler: studies in organic and inorganic substances | |
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| Valency | |
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| Stanislao Cannizzaro: the distinction between atoms and molecules | |
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| The development of the periodic table, by Mendeleyev and others | |
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| The science of thermodynamics | |
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| James Joule on thermodynamics | |
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| William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and the laws of thermodynamics | |
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| James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann: kinetic theory and the mean free path of molecules | |
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| Albert Einstein: Avogadro's number, Brownian motion and why the sky is blue | |
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| Let There be Light | |
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| The wave model of light revived | |
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| Thomas Young: his double-slit experiment | |
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| Fraunhofer lines | |
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| The study of spectroscopy and the spectra of stars | |
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| Michael Faraday: his studies in electromagnetism | |
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| The invention of the electric motor and the dynamo | |
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| Faraday on the lines of force | |
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| Measuring the speed of light | |
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| James Clerk Maxwell's complete theory of electromagnetism | |
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| Light is a form of electromagnetic disturbance | |
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| Albert Michelson and Edward Morley: the Michelson | |
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| Morley experiment on light | |
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| Albert Einstein: special theory of relativity | |
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| Minkowski: the geometrical union of space and time in accordance with this theory | |
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| The Last Hurrah! of Classical Science | |
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| Contractionism: our wrinkling planet? | |
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| Early hypotheses on continental drift | |
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| Alfred Wegener: the father of the theory of continental drift | |
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| The evidence for Pangea | |
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| The radioactive technique for measuring the age of rocks | |
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| Holmes's account of continental drift | |
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| Geomagnetic reversals and the molten core of the Earth | |
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| The model of 'sea-floor spreading' | |
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| Further developments on continental drift | |
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| The 'Bullard fit' of the continents | |
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| Plate tectonics | |
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| The story of Ice Ages: Jean de Charpentier | |
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| Louis Agassiz and the glacial model | |
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| The astronomical theory of Ice Ages | |
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| The elliptical orbit model | |
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| James Croll | |
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| The Milankovitch model | |
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| Modern ideas about Ice Ages | |
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| The impact on evolution | |
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| Modern Times | |
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| Inner Space | |
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| Invention of the vacuum tube | |
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| 'Cathode rays' and 'canal rays' | |
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| William Crookes: the Crookes tube and the corpuscular interpretation of cathode rays | |
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| Cathode rays are shown to move far slower than light | |
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| The discovery of the electron | |
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| Wilhelm Rontgen & the discovery of X-rays | |
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| Radioactivity; Becquerel and the Curies | |
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| Discovery of alpha, beta and gamma radiation | |
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| Rutherford's model of the atom | |
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| Radioactive decay | |
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| The existence of isotopes | |
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| Discovery of the neutron | |
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| Max Planck and Planck's constant, black-body radiation and the existence of energy quanta | |
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| Albert Einstein and light quanta | |
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| Niels Bohr | |
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| The first quantum model of the atom | |
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| Louis de Broglie | |
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| Erwin Schrodinger's wave equation for electrons | |
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| The particle-based approach to the quantum world of electrons | |
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| Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: wave-particle duality | |
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| Dirac's equation of the electron | |
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| The existence of antimatter | |
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| The strong nuclear force | |
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| The weak nuclear force; neutrinos | |
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| Quantum electrodynamics | |
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| The future? Quarks and string | |
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| The Realm of Life | |
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| The most complex things in the Universe | |
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| Charles Darwin and nineteenth-century theories of evolution | |
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| The role of cells in life | |
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| The division of cells | |
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| The discovery of chromosomes and their role in heredity | |
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| Intracellular pangenesis | |
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| Gregor Mendel: father of genetics | |
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| The Mendelian laws of inheritance | |
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| The study of chromosomes | |
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| Nucleic acid | |
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| Working towards DNA and RNA | |
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| The tetranucleotide hypothesis | |
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| The Chargaff rules | |
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| The chemistry of life | |
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| Covalent bond model and carbon chemistry | |
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| The ionic bond | |
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| Bragg's law | |
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| Chemistry as a branch of physics | |
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| Linus Pauling | |
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| The nature of the hydrogen bond | |
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| Studies of fibrous proteins | |
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| The alpha-helix structure | |
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| Francis Crick and James Watson: the model of the DNA double helix | |
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| The genetic code | |
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| The genetic age of humankind | |
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| Humankind is nothing special | |
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| Outer Space | |
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| Measuring the distances of stars | |
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| Stellar parallax determinations | |
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| Spectroscopy and the stuff of stars | |
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| The Hertzsprung--Russell diagram | |
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| The colour--magnitude relationship and the distances to stars | |
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| The Cepheid distance scale | |
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| Cepheid stars and the distances to other galaxies | |
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| General theory of relativity outlined | |
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| The expanding Universe | |
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| The steady state model of the Universe | |
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| The nature of the Big Bang | |
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| Predicting background radiation | |
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| Measuring background radiation | |
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| Modern measurements: the COBE satellite | |
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| How the stars shine: the nuclear fusion process | |
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| The concept of 'resonances' | |
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| CHON and humankind's place in the Universe | |
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| Into the unknown | |
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| Coda: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |