The Thinkers
(Book)

This book is made up of short, one page biographies of 69 scientists, inventors and geniuses who made important contributions to science.

"While this may appear to be a book about remarkable people, it is actually about the potential of the human mind. The Thinkers celebrates the prospect of looking up through the telescope or down through a microscope and discovering previously undiscovered wonders. It rejoices in the visionaries who noticed a need and conjured up an enduring solution, or who turned the germ of an idea into a seminal concept, or who obsessively tinkered until they arrived at an invention that changed the world. Like the painting hanging in the Wyoming Museum of Science and Industry from which the images in this book are taken, this gathering of brilliance is meant to convey the scope of human inquiry and innovation. It is by no means a comprehensive collection. The list of renowned thinkers who do not appear is profoundly impressive. But the historical figures herein represent a diverse spectrum - of places of origin, fields of study, and tales of epiphany, whether it concerns an apple falling, a kite soaring, or an unexpected mold growing in a petri dish. The thinkers in these pages are universal geniuses and practical problem-solvers, martyrs and misanthropes. They come from Austria and Argentina, India and Siberia, rural West Virginia and urban Brooklyn, classical Greece and colonial Maryland, medieval Poland and 20th-century Pennsylvania. They are the granddaughter of a Mexican general, the son of escaped slaves, the 4-foot-3 sister of a famous astronomer, a Jewish refugee, a Muslim icon, a Cherokee hero, a Kenyan activist, a Navy rear admiral, a Founding Father, a Victorian socialite, even a movie star. They have been called the Father of Medicine, the First Lady of Physics, the Wizard of Menlo Park, the King of Cool, the Queen of Code, and Time magazine's Person of the Century. These scientists and inventors introduced the world to the telescope and trigonometry, the periodic table and the printing press, the rocket and the radio, stem cells and the steam engine, paper and penicillin, dark matter and the differently-abled brain. They wrote books that transformed thought: On the Origin of Species, The Interpretation of Dreams, Silent Spring, A Brief History of Time. And they dreamed up revolutionary theories: Earth revolves around the Sun, mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, the universe is expanding. To explore their lives is to explore the moons of Jupiter, the physics of sound, the scattering of light, the possibilities of film, the behavior of whales, the movement of galaxies, the uses of peanuts, and the calculation of pi. The hope is that these stories will both educate and inspire. As one of the thinkers of this book, a fellow names Aristotle, once said, 'All human beings, by nature, desire to know'."--Brad Herzog and Zachary Pullen.