Research Catalog

Title

Faces of science / Mariana Cook ; introduction by Gerard Piel.

Author

Cook, Mariana Ruth.

Publication

New York : W.W. Norton, [2005], ©2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

174 pages : portraits; 30 cm

Summary

"In this intimate look at the people behind many of the great discoveries of our time, photographer Mariana Cook turns her camera on some of the greatest men and women of the scientific community. The seventy-seven portraits included in Faces of Science make their subjects accessible to us and less formidable than they may have seemed in the past. Each image is paired with a short autobiographical essay explaining how the scientist became interested in his or her chosen field." "Across a broad array of disciplines, these scientists have used a combination of a childhood sense of wonder with advanced knowledge and technology to pose and answer some remarkable questions: How do stars make starlight? Here you will encounter Hans Bethe, who answered that question seventy years ago. When did life begin on earth? On fossil evidence, William Schopf has traced the origin of life back 3.8 billion years." "The contributions of the scientific community can be on a large scale: Paul Hoffman established that 700 million years ago global warming triggered an ice age that froze the entire planet in a "snowball." Freeman Dyson put the finishing touch on the theory of quantum electrodynamics, contributing to physics' near-complete understanding of the world around us. Or their discoveries can relate to the smallest living things, like Jane Shen-Miller Schopf's work with thousand-year-old lotus seeds or naturalist Miriam Rothschild's discoveries about the remarkable metabolism of the flea. No matter what their focus, the scientists' passion for their life's work, and for the advancement of human knowledge, shines through."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Cook, Mariana Ruth
• Scientists > Biography
• Scientists > Portraits
• Portrait photography

Note

• Includes index.

ISBN

0393061183 (hardcover)

LCCN

2005006372

OCLC

• OCM58563536
• SCSB-5213479

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries