Technology Biography

This is the origin story of the airwaves - the foundational technology of the communications age - as told through the 40-year friendship of an entrepreneurial industrialist and a brilliant inventor. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and equal parts Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, and William Randolph Hearst, was the greatest supporter of his friend, Edwin Armstrong, developer of the first amplifier, the modern radio transmitter, and FM radio.

In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars rover Curiosity is poised toanswer this all-important question.

Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras, and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning.

In this book, Prusiner tells the remarkable story of his discovery of prions - infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease but surprisingly contain no genetic material - and reveals how superb and meticulous science is actually practiced with talented teams of researchers who persevere. He recounts the frustrations and rewards of years of research and offers fascinating portraits of his peers as they raced to discover the causes of fatal brain diseases.

Alan Shepard's boyhood fascination with flight led him from constructing model airplanes in his grandfather's basement to attaining national hero status in the race to space. Rooted in hard work and education, this pioneer's dreams of flight came true as he became not only the first American launched into space but, later, one of the privileged few to walk on the moon. When he wasn't soaring above the clouds, astronaut Alan Shepard used his expertise to benefit others, raising money to fuel the dreams of science students and guiding NASA missions.

In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.

La espléndida biografía de Alexander von Humboldt, el héroe perdido de la ciencia y padre de la ecología.

The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons—most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen—are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel and send humans even further than NASA has gone.

This audiobook covers how Elon Musk went from getting bullied in school to small-time entrepreneur to CEO of two major companies that seem like they're straight out of science fiction - and how he almost went broke along the way. The aim of this audiobook is to be educational and inspirational with actionable principles you can incorporate into your own life straight from the great man himself.

Carl Jung was the founder of analytical psychology who revolutionized the way we approached the human psyche. Drawing on Eastern mysticism, mythology and dream analysis to develop his theories, Jung proposed many ideas which are still influential today, including introversion, extroversion and the collective unconscious.

With only three months of formal education, Thomas Edison grew up to be one of the most successful inventors of all time. Applying scientific principles to practical use, he made scores of inventions and held over thirteen hundred patents, from improvements on the telegraph and phonograph to the development of the incandescent lamp and a whole system for distributing electricity. Edison's rise from humble beginnings and his unceasing struggle to overcome obstacles illustrate the spirit of America.

One day in 1996, the neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel took a call from his program officer at the National Institute of Mental Health, who informed him that he had been awarded a key grant. Also, the officer said, he and his colleagues thought Kandel would win the Nobel Prize. "I hope not soon," Kandel's wife, Denise, said when she heard this. Sociologists had found that Nobel Prize winners often did not contribute much more to science, she explained.

His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures - as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten - and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.

A perceptive account of the lives of fourteen gifted innovators who have played important roles in scientific and industrial progress. The achievements of Benjamin Banneker, Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carver, and others have made jobs easier, saved countless lives, and in many cases, altered the course of history.

Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life, he was also ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends.

Latitude is a gloriously exciting tale of adventure and scientific discovery that has never been told before. Nicholas Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of 12 European adventurer-scientists in the mid-18th century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles, before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of one degree latitude at the equator.

Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers - John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard - who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world.

Perhaps the greatest physicist of the second half of the 20th century, Richard Feynman changed the way we think about quantum mechanics, the most perplexing of all physical theories. Here Lawrence M. Krauss, himself a theoretical physicist and best-selling author, offers a unique scientific biography: a rollicking narrative coupled with clear and novel expositions of science at the limits.

Ieri visionario altruista, salvatore dell'umanità impegnato in imprese ambiziose come liberarci dalla dipendenza dai combustibili fossili o colonizzare Marte, oggi Elon Musk si è spinto oltre l'industria automobilistica e quella aerospaziale per sfidare direttamente le politiche che plasmano gli Stati Uniti e non solo. Questo lo ha portato al centro di alcuni dei settori più complessi - dalla produzione industriale alla politica, dalla difesa alla tecnologia - mentre il suo comportamento sempre più imprevedibile solleva dubbi sulla sua stabilità e sulla sua capacità di giudizio.