EINSTEIN'S ELEVATOR

 Scientists who Changed the World

 Felix Dothan

The author writes about the life and work of prominent scientists who succeeded in unraveling secrets of Nature, and inventors who changed the course of human life. These scientists were real people, flesh and blood, each very different from the other. Among them were near-saints, such as Albert Einstein and Lise Meitner, alongside people almost from another world, like Srinivasa Ramanujan. There were eminent scientists who lacked intellectual integrity, such as Leibniz, or who arouse feelings of both admiration and revulsion, for instance Fritz Haber, and more: Archimedes, one of the founders of mathematics and inventor of advanced weaponry; Benjamin Franklin - businessman, pioneer of the theory of electricity, diplomat, author, and statesman; Davy – a sharp and brilliant chemist; and so on to the renowned astrophysicist Chandrasekhar, one of the scientists who, in recent decades, discovered astounding facts about the universe.  

Along with the biographies of scientists, the book contains short stories about subjects on the outskirts of science - stories that are interesting and amusing, but instructive as well.

Felix Dothan is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a Visiting Scientist at the European Institute for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, and a Visiting Professor at the University of California and at Yale.

200 pages, 14.5X21 cn