Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science

New
Hardcover
2011
$22.71

A selection of the Scientific American book club Recommended by MSNBC, Los Angeles Times, & American Association for the Advancement of Science's SB&F magazine This wonderful scientific memoir captures the romance and beauty of research in precise poetic prose that is as gorgeous and evocative as anything written by Rilke, painted by Seurat, or played by Casals. --Mary Doria Russell, author of Doc and The Sparrow A radiant love letter to science from a scientist with a poet's soul ...Green is an exquisite writer, and his fierce focus and mastery of style are reminiscent of the biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas. --Kirkus Reviews In Boltzmann's Tomb, Bill Green interweaves the story of his own lifelong evolution as a scientist, and his work in the Antarctic, with a travelogue that is a personal and universal history of science. Like Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder--this book serves as a marvelous introduction to the great figures of science. Along with lyrical meditations on the tragic life of Galileo, the wildly eccentric Tycho Brahe, and the visionary Sir Isaac Newton, Green's ruminations return throughout to the lesser-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann. Using Boltzmann's theories of randomness and entropy as a larger metaphor for the unpredictable paths that our lives take, Green shows us that science, like art, is a lived adventure. Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes which received the American Museum of Natural History's John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Synopsis

A selection of the Scientific American book club Recommended by MSNBC, Los Angeles Times, & American Association for the Advancement of Science's SB&F magazine This wonderful scientific memoir captures the romance and beauty of research in precise poetic prose that is as gorgeous and evocative as anything written by Rilke, painted by Seurat, or played by Casals. --Mary Doria Russell, author of Doc and The Sparrow A radiant love letter to science from a scientist with a poet's soul ...Green is an exquisite writer, and his fierce focus and mastery of style are reminiscent of the biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas. --Kirkus Reviews In Boltzmann's Tomb, Bill Green interweaves the story of his own lifelong evolution as a scientist, and his work in the Antarctic, with a travelogue that is a personal and universal history of science. Like Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder--this book serves as a marvelous introduction to the great figures of science. Along with lyrical meditations on the tragic life of Galileo, the wildly eccentric Tycho Brahe, and the visionary Sir Isaac Newton, Green's ruminations return throughout to the lesser-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann. Using Boltzmann's theories of randomness and entropy as a larger metaphor for the unpredictable paths that our lives take, Green shows us that science, like art, is a lived adventure. Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes which received the American Museum of Natural History's John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

$22.71

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 22 Apr 2011
ISBN 10: 1934137359
ISBN 13: 9781934137352
Book Overview: We will be pursuing blurbs from figures in both the science and literature communities, Richard Holmes among them. Media exposure and reviews: Radio and print: We will do a complete review mailing to the mainstream media and go for radio interviews on PRI and national, regional and local NPR stations. We will also pursue the following for print review: Nature, Natural History, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, The Scientist, Seed Magazine PW, LJ, Kirkus, Booklist, etc. We will also submit to mainstream environmental magazines, including Onearth and Sierra. Academic mailings and inclusion on Consortium's academic website. We will send email blasts to academic lists and a postcard mailing. Designated publicist for this title, Molly Mikolowski has replaced Janna Rademacher.

Author Bio

Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He first went to Antarctica in 1968 and began doing his own research there in 1980. To date he has been there nine times and has published many articles on biogeochemical processes in the pristine lakes and meltwater streams of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. In addition to Boltzmann's Tomb, he is also the author of Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes, which received the American Museum of Natural History's John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.