Technology Biography

What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world - those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the merely creative, the many one-hit wonders among us? Melissa Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people - Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs - to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again.

Are you captivated by the mysteries of the universe and the minds that unravel them? Eager to understand how a single equation transformed our understanding of everything from atoms to galaxies? Wondering how the thoughts of one visionary could redefine the boundaries of space, time, and reality itself? Dive into the extraordinary life and legacy of Albert Einstein in A Brief History of Albert Einstein - Space, Time, and Quantum Theory: E=mc² and the Foundations of Modern Physics.

After losing four pregnancies with no obvious cause, Jennie Agg set out to understand why miscarriage remains such a profoundly misunderstood, under-researched and under-acknowledged experience. Part-memoir, part-scientific investigation, Life, Almost documents Agg's path to motherhood and her search for answers. Tracing each tentative step of her fifth pregnancy—as her body becomes a creature she does not wish to spook—Agg dismantles the myths that we unquestioningly accept about our reproductive lives.

Three years ago, 32-year-old Markus "Notch" Persson of Stockholm was an unknown and bored computer programmer. Today, he is a multi-millionaire international icon. Minecraft, the "virtual Lego" game Markus crafted in his free time, has become one of the most talked about activities since Tetris. Talked about by tens of millions of people, in fact.It is the story of unlikely success, fast money, and the power of digital technology to rattle an empire. And it is about creation, exclusion, and the feeling of not fitting in.

Even when he was a kid, Albert Einstein did things his own way. He thought in pictures instead of words, and his special way of thinking helped him understand big ideas like the structure of music and why a compass always points north. Those ideas made him want to keep figuring out the secrets of the universe. Other people thought he was just a dreamer, but because of his curiosity, Einstein grew up to be one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known.

All his life, Charles Darwin hated controversy. Yet he takes his place among the Giants of Science for what remains an immensely controversial subject: the theory of evolution. Darwin began piecing together his explanation for how all living things change or adapt during his five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle. But it took him 20 years to go public, for fear of the backlash his theory would cause.

The private space industry’s consensus leader, SpaceX, headed by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, was worth an estimated $187 billion in 2023 while taking on more roles—flying cargo, supplies, and astronauts to outer space, and even playing a central role as rocket supplier to NASA’s Artemis moon mission. In SpaceX: Elon Musk and the Final Frontier, science journalist and editor Brad Bergan tells the story of SpaceX. Bergan examines every detail surrounding SpaceX’s efforts to accelerate humankind’s exploration and understanding of outer space.

By building his own microscope, Antony van Leeuwenhoek advanced humanity's understanding of the oft-invisible world around us. Microbes are everywhere: in the soil and oceans, in snow, and inside our bodies. But in Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s time, people believed that what they saw with their own eyes was all that existed in the world. How did a simple tradesman - who didn’t go to college or speak English or Latin like all the other scientists - change everyone’s minds?

Best selling author Amir Aczel ( God's Equation) delves into the riddle of infinity, religion and science with "mad" mathematician Georg Cantor, in what Booklist calls "an indispensable book for anyone interested in the darker side of intellectual progress."

As the sole legitimate child of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was the progeny of literary royalty. Many might have naturally expected her to go into the field of her father, but instead of delving into poetry, she delved into the hard sciences of mathematics and analytic thinking. Even so, Ada still had the imagination of a lyricist when writing scientific treatises, at times referring to her own work as nothing short of “poetical science”.

The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK is a world-leading scientific institution. This book, by LMB alumna Kathy Weston, is a collective portrait of women scientists who, as staff members, visitors, and trainees, helped build the LMB’s reputation as a powerhouse of science, often going on to stellar careers at other outstanding institutions around the world. Combining narrative history with interview transcripts and personal reminiscence, Weston’s book describes the career accomplishments of these successful scientists.

When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.

G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.

Orcs and humans. Angels and devils. North and south. Harmony and discord. Threatened by competition in the space they popularized, Blizzard Entertainment looks to the stars to build a new franchise and evolve into a well-oiled machine. No longer the underdog, Blizzard North takes Diablo out of murky dungeons and across deserts, jungles, and snowy mountaintops.

After yet another online dating disaster, Amy Webb was about to cancel her JDate membership when an epiphany struck: It wasn’t that her standards were too high, as women are often told, but that she wasn’t evaluating the right data in suitors’ profiles. That night Webb, an award-winning journalist and digital-strategy expert, made a detailed, exhaustive list of what she did and didn’t want in a mate.

Dr. Temple Grandin gets to the real issues of autism, the ones parents, teachers, and individuals on the spectrum face every day. Temple offers helpful dos and don'ts, practical strategies, and try-it-now tips, all based on her insider perspective and a great deal of research.

In the mid-20th century, Michael S. Gazzaniga made one of the great discoveries in the history of neuroscience: split-brain theory, the notion that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from each other and have different strengths.

Michael Faraday: The Life and Legacy of the Influential 19th Century Scientist Who Pioneered Electromagnetism examines the life and work that made Faraday one of history’s most important scientists. You will learn about Michael Faraday like never before.

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos.

The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog.