On the Shoulders of Giants by Stephen Hawking

[Reaper]

Have any of you read, or own, "On the Shoulders of Giants" by Stephen Hawking. This book differs from most of his written works in that instead of talking about string theory and other troubles with unifying all of physics, he instead talks about past scientists and all the landmark books/written works that have contributed to our understanding of the universe today.

 

The 5 scientists he talks about are Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein. And the book is basically a compilation of their original works, as they wrote them back in the day. All works that ultimately gave birth to physics and the modern understanding of our universe in general. It is one of the only books that he doesn't leave out equations, as they were part of the original manuscripts.

 

Haven't delved too far into the book yet (its 1200 pages long and I'm only on page 20), but it's a very good read so far and is very captivating, as you get to see how they came up with their ideas in the first place.

 

So, who else has read/own this book?

Edited December 27, 2008 by Mokele
Fixed spelling error in thread title

[Pangloss]

Sounds interesting. I'll have to add this to my list.

[ajb]

I have a copy in my office. However, I must confess to have never use it.

[ParanoiA]

Is this book accessible to a layman like myself? I'm fascinated by these people, and their contributions, but I'd like to think I could keep up with the text.

[ajb]

I would say that it is not the place to learn about the ideas presented in them. Original papers will often not reflect the modern view point as we have had time to digest the results and (often) reinterpret them using more modern language.

 

That said, if you can get hold of a copy have a look.

[Reaper]

Is this book accessible to a layman like myself? I'm fascinated by these people, and their contributions, but I'd like to think I could keep up with the text.

 

Depends on which sections you read. Galileo's works are very accessible, but Einstein not so much unless you have knowledge of Tensor Calculus...

 

There is almost no commentary or footnotes in that book, other than to translate some ambiguous statement

[ADIL MALIK]

Have any of you read, or own, "On the Shoulders of Giants" by Stephen Hawking. This book differs from most of his written works in that instead of talking about string theory and other troubles with unifying all of physics, he instead talks about past scientists and all the landmark books/written works that have contributed to our understanding of the universe today.

 

The 5 scientists he talks about are Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein. And the book is basically a compilation of their original works, as they wrote them back in the day. All works that ultimately gave birth to physics and the modern understanding of our universe in general. It is one of the only books that he doesn't leave out equations, as they were part of the original manuscripts.

 

Haven't delved too far into the book yet (its 1200 pages long and I'm only on page 20), but it's a very good read so far and is very captivating, as you get to see how they came up with their ideas in the first place.

 

So, who else has read/own this book?

 

i need soft copy of this book please send me link i have craze to read this book

[Ophiolite]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=on+the+shoulders+of+giants&field-author=hawking&field-title=&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&field-p_n_condition-type=&field-feature_browse-bin=2656022011&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=relevanceexprank&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=42&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=12