I'm not a physicist but "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" was life-changing. A sweeping view of the baton-passing of ideas over decades that lead to a climatic event.
Both personal, and highly detailed, it is an absolute masterpiece and a must read for anyone pursuing a scientific career.
JKCalhoun 368 days ago [-]
A long read, but I enjoyed it as well.
WillAdams 368 days ago [-]
The inclusion of Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_ is bizarre --- it posits an impossible substance, with bizarre properties, and examines society in a way I have trouble relating to, and its commentary on science such as it is, is if anything, discouraging.
_Dune_ for its role in inspiring the study of ecology would seem more fitting.
It's unfortunate that a didactic text such as H. Beam Piper's novella "Omnilingual" couldn't be considered instead.
teachrdan 368 days ago [-]
Prions behave a bit like a biological version of ice-nine. It's a novel shape of protein that "teaches" other protein to be shaped like it. Obviously its scope is far more limited than all the world's water, but it's still sobering to think that this risk even exists.
jhbadger 368 days ago [-]
While I agree that the book presents a fairly negative view of science and scientists (it reminds me strongly of Margaret Atwood's more recent Oryx and Crake), the idea of a substance with the properties of ice-9 isn't that ridiculous -- it was actually suggested by Irving Langmuir (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1932) to H.G. Wells as an idea (although Wells never ended up using it)
JKCalhoun 368 days ago [-]
I see nothing wrong with calling out the dangers of science in the service of the military. I wouldn't assume the list should include only science cheerleading books.
(And probably the Pynchon inclusion in the list dovetails with Kurt Vonnegut's.)
Deracemization in near equilibrium crystallization system
Materials of single chirality can also be achieved by deracemization of a racemic mixture to pure enantiomers in a near-equilibrium system. Deracemization processes aim to transform the undesired enantiomer into the desired enantiomer with a high yield of 100%
cduzz 368 days ago [-]
In Cat's Cradle, "Ice 9" is an idea that sweeps across the world destroying it. It's an allegory.
egl2020 368 days ago [-]
Bad title for the list. The books by Feynman, Weinberg, Sagan, Steinbeck, McPhee, and Levi didn't shape science. At best they are good descriptions of what happened in the century.
cduzz 368 days ago [-]
Which books did Feynman write?
Lot's of people have written books and said they're "stories told by Feynman" but that's not really the same thing as "Feynman dictated this story and reviewed it with the editors..."
xboxnolifes 368 days ago [-]
I was under the impression that he didn't write any books. The books attributed to him are transcribed by and edited by other people, with the source of the information being attributed to him (recorded conversations and lectures).
cduzz 368 days ago [-]
Right -- for example, the "Joking" and other stories are written by Ralph Leighton[1].
Interestingly, Ralph is son of Robert Leighton[2], the caltech physicist who was a contemporary (and peer) of Feynman's and part of the team that transcribed and edited "the Feynman Lectures".
So that's 2 (or 3) of the big books that feynman's said to have written that he was only partially involved with.
And lastly, if my dad were a physicist and I went out of my way to write a book about another physicist, and I went out of my way to describe that other physicist as the best and most coolist physicist ever, there's probably an interesting backstory that's not in the book.
If the list uses ISBNs or similar identifiers, it should be relatively straightforward to create an updated page with links to a source such as OpenLibrary, Worldcat, or Wikimedia's ISBN template (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN>).
Though these don't look like ISBNs...
PALS (Library Technology in Minnesota) is now at <https://www.mnpals.org/>, and there might be a URL migration path there.
FuriouslyAdrift 368 days ago [-]
Surprised Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid isn't in there somewhere...
tshaddox 368 days ago [-]
For what it's worth, "The Mind's I" is on the list, which was edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett.
FuriouslyAdrift 368 days ago [-]
I Am a Strange Loop is also good...
sitkack 368 days ago [-]
Mind's I is a much better book, GEB is one of those books that everyone has that no one has read. Read the Cliff's Notes for GEB and spend your time on Mind's I.
I haven't read The Mind's I, but I rather enjoyed GEB when I read it in college. I didn't realize it was considered a book "no one actually reads." My sense has been quite the opposite!
jhbadger 366 days ago [-]
Back in the day, lots of people did read GEB, although we often missed the point. Apparently (as he wrote in an introduction in a later edition) the point of the book was to encourage people to study AI (at a time when it wasn't popular). While I can see this now, at the time I was more intrigued by his chapter on molecular biology and went into that instead.
mfragin 368 days ago [-]
Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" is not on the list.
Jtsummers 368 days ago [-]
> November-December 1999
A New Kind of Science was published in 2002. Unless the author of this list had access to the future, it would have been hard to include it.
Insanity 368 days ago [-]
The field of science is too broad to capture in just 100 books without feeling like something is missing. E.g, one of the most important scientific achievements in my biased view would relate to computing (/ telecommunications) - but I do not immediately spot books related to this.
Edit: I missed one on technology that is listed. Still feels meager in comparison to others. But again I am biased :)
captn3m0 368 days ago [-]
It also lists "The art of computer programming (1968) by Donald Knuth"
WillAdams 368 days ago [-]
Seems very light on math also, with just three texts on it. As much as I respect Bertrand Russell, I'm not sure if _Principia Mathematica_ is the last word on mathematics for the century.
Ironically, Knuth has stated that his idea of _Literate Programming_ is more important than TAoCP.
dkarl 368 days ago [-]
> As much as I respect Bertrand Russell, I'm not sure if _Principia Mathematica_ is the last word on mathematics for the century.
I feel like they picked it because not much original mathematics is published in book form. Most of the work that shaped the century in mathematics was published as papers.
They might also have picked it because Russell published books that are readable by laypeople, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to read Principia Mathematica because of this list, they could put it down and pick something else by Russell to read instead.
sega_sai 368 days ago [-]
A bit of a strange list. I.e. I'm not sure that "The Hubble atlas of galaxies" by Allan Sandage is that influential really.
Also I went there to check if the Jaynes's Probability Theory book was there or not, but it is not.
qntty 368 days ago [-]
This just made me realize that we're 10 years past the 100th anniversary of Einstein publishing about general relativity. Which made me realize that we're a quarter of the way through the 21th century...
Also, I think a list made today would have to include some of the early work on deep learning that happened in the 20th century. Which goes to show that sometimes you don't know what's important until much later on.
the__alchemist 368 days ago [-]
In line with some other comments: The list is finite, and curated, so I will add some not included: GEB (As FuriouslyAdrift said), and The Eighth Day of Creation. The latter is a collection of first-hand interviews with the biologists who shaped the rapid expansion of the field in the 20th century.
tcshit 368 days ago [-]
So few of the greatest books that shaped a Century of Science...
drawkward 368 days ago [-]
I can point to 15 days that are going to shape a century of anti-science...at least here in the USA.
mellosouls 368 days ago [-]
(1999)
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daniel5uie3 368 days ago [-]
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daniel5uie3 368 days ago [-]
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abhimanyu81026 368 days ago [-]
ping
Rendered at 11:43:05 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Both personal, and highly detailed, it is an absolute masterpiece and a must read for anyone pursuing a scientific career.
_Dune_ for its role in inspiring the study of ecology would seem more fitting.
It's unfortunate that a didactic text such as H. Beam Piper's novella "Omnilingual" couldn't be considered instead.
(And probably the Pynchon inclusion in the list dovetails with Kurt Vonnegut's.)
Deracemization in near equilibrium crystallization system Materials of single chirality can also be achieved by deracemization of a racemic mixture to pure enantiomers in a near-equilibrium system. Deracemization processes aim to transform the undesired enantiomer into the desired enantiomer with a high yield of 100%
Lot's of people have written books and said they're "stories told by Feynman" but that's not really the same thing as "Feynman dictated this story and reviewed it with the editors..."
Interestingly, Ralph is son of Robert Leighton[2], the caltech physicist who was a contemporary (and peer) of Feynman's and part of the team that transcribed and edited "the Feynman Lectures".
So that's 2 (or 3) of the big books that feynman's said to have written that he was only partially involved with.
And lastly, if my dad were a physicist and I went out of my way to write a book about another physicist, and I went out of my way to describe that other physicist as the best and most coolist physicist ever, there's probably an interesting backstory that's not in the book.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Leighton
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Leighton
The Wayback version ... unfortunately doesn't seem to fare any better:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20120927083131/http://web.mnstat...>
If the list uses ISBNs or similar identifiers, it should be relatively straightforward to create an updated page with links to a source such as OpenLibrary, Worldcat, or Wikimedia's ISBN template (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN>).
Though these don't look like ISBNs...
PALS (Library Technology in Minnesota) is now at <https://www.mnpals.org/>, and there might be a URL migration path there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I
A New Kind of Science was published in 2002. Unless the author of this list had access to the future, it would have been hard to include it.
Edit: I missed one on technology that is listed. Still feels meager in comparison to others. But again I am biased :)
Ironically, Knuth has stated that his idea of _Literate Programming_ is more important than TAoCP.
I feel like they picked it because not much original mathematics is published in book form. Most of the work that shaped the century in mathematics was published as papers.
They might also have picked it because Russell published books that are readable by laypeople, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to read Principia Mathematica because of this list, they could put it down and pick something else by Russell to read instead.
Also, I think a list made today would have to include some of the early work on deep learning that happened in the 20th century. Which goes to show that sometimes you don't know what's important until much later on.