Johns Hopkins University, one of the preeminent medical schools in the nation today, has played a unique role in the history of medicine. When it first opened its doors in 1893, medicine was a rough-and-ready trade. It would soon evolve into a rigorous science. It was nothing short of a revolution.This transition might seem inevitable from our vantage point today. In recent years, medical science has mapped the human genome, deployed robotic tools to perform delicate surgeries, and...

Now with an Historical Afterword by Ron MillerIncludes the original illustrationsFeatured in Ron Miller’s “The Conquest of Space Book Series.” Originally published in 1751, this fantasy-adventure contains one of the most detailed and best-realized spacecraft/flying machines in science fiction. It marked the transition from the fantastic and mystical means of reaching space that had preceded it and laid the foundation for the scientific verisimilitude of Poe a...

Just three women qualified for a professorship in physics in Germany before the Second World War. All three began their careers with great promise; all three had to leave Hitlers Germany, among them Hertha Sponer. An ambitious girl, she had to struggle to achieve the education she craved, culminating in a Ph.D. at the University of Gttingen. There followed an apprenticeship in Berlin, and work under the aegis of James Franck, around the time he received the Nobel Prize. Their academic worl...

A series of biographical lectures originally published in 1850. Each chapter is a philosophical treatment of the life of an intellectual. The six representatives are Plato, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Napolean and Goethe.

A companion series to the acclaimed Word Biblical Commentary.Finding the great themes of the books of the Bible is essential to the study of God's Word and to the preaching and teaching of its truths. These themes and ideas are often like precious gems: they lie beneath the surface and can only be discovered with some difficulty. While commentaries are useful for helping readers understand the content of a verse or chapter, they are not usually designed to help the...

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean thi...

He set out to explore the world — and discovered the truth about humanity. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift takes readers on an extraordinary voyage across strange lands and stranger societies — a brilliant blend of fantasy, adventure, and biting satire that has captivated readers for centuries. From the tiny citizens of Lilliput to the towering giants of Brobdingnag, from the philosophical horses of Houyhnhnmland to the bizarre scientists of Laputa, the traveler Lemuel Gulliver en...

“Leaves no doubt that this bizarre Hungarian was one of the great minds of our time, or any time . . . A wonderful book about this endlessly fascinating man” (The New York Times Book Review).When we think about the creation of the atom bomb, we may think of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, or Edward Teller. Yet one name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, though he is known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The m...

Don Juan by Baron George Gordon Byron ByronThe story told in the seventeen cafeteria begins with the birth of Don Juan. As a young man, he was a precocious person and was in a relationship with his mother's friends. The husband knew it, and Don Juan was sent to Cadiz. Along the way, he is survived by a shipwreck and meets the daughter of a pirate whom the Don Juan seller was a slave. A young woman, a member of the Sultan's harem, saw that the slave had been bought....

"I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene."