Outside Back Cover

Every discovery, every inventor, and every scientific and technological advance in human history.

Here in one volume is instant access to the progress of science, year by year. From the first stone tools manufactured to the first patent issued for a vertebrate invented by man, scientific developments and accomplishments are concisely listed in an easy-to-read format. Readers see what happened, who made it happen—and what else happened at the same time. For answers to specific questions and general browsing alike, the astonishing scope of man’s scientific genius is at one’s fingertips.

“This is a handy reference book and an interesting tool for all list lovers.” - Newsday

“A fascinating book to browse through. The information presented is varied, accurate, and scholarly, yet entertaining and inviting. An excellent reference work at a very affordable price” - Booklist

A Quality Paperback Book Club Selection

Alexander Hellemans is an editor at a London scientific publishing house. Bryan Bunch runs Scientific Publishing, Inc., a book-packaging firm, and teaches mathematics.

Preface

Like the arts, science is an important part of our cultural heritage. Since earliest times people have tried to explain the universe, as in the myths that arose about the sun and the moon. By at least 600 BC a few scholars started to replace these myths with rational explanations, the beginning of science. Well before that time, the body of wisdom and skill we call technology had become essential to the human way of life.

This book tells what happened in science and technology, when it happened, and who made it happen. This information is largely in the timetables, a chronological, subject-by-subject chart.

We also want to explain the context in which science takes place as it changes from period to period. This is the purpose of the ten overviews. Each one covers a period characterized by particular trends in scientific activity. Sometimes such a period is roughly the same as a well recognized cultural event, such as the Renaissance, or a standard time interval, such as the nineteenth century. But the scientific periods are bounded by events, important to the development of science.

Historians of science have abandoned the idea that science develops linearly, according to simple rules. Instead, the growth of science is much like a stream, growing slowly from its source, meandering through plains, and fed by other small streams until it becomes a river. In the timetables, you can note that sometimes, as in the early part of the twentieth century, physics is dominant—the main part of the stream. You can also see where new streams merge into the main body of science.

Short individual entries cannot do justice to the most important or most interesting developments in science. We have selected more than a hundred significant topics for special attention. Each of these topics, ranging from the first scientists to the recent use of genetic engineering to correct in-born defects, is explained briefly in boxes within the overviews or within the timetables.

The Timetables of Science is based upon the notion that chronology is important: when something happened tells something about the event. If you know that Lucretius supported the atomic theory, it makes a difference in understanding what that means to know when Lucretius lived. The early supporters of atomism date from the fifth century BC and almost none of their work survives; we only have second hand reports of it. The people who made atomism a general belief, on the other hand, were chemists working near the start of the nineteenth century AD. The place of Lucretius—first century BC—tells that he was neither the philosophical innovator nor the practical chemist, but was important in transmitting the idea.

Unfortunately for this premise, it is not alway clear in retrospect exactly when something happened. We list about 10,000 separate events. Especially in the early years, the day, the year, or even the decade for many events are not known. We have relied upon the consensus of many historians of science whose works we consulted to help locate the events as closely as possible.

We particularly want to thank the historians of science who read The Timetables of Science in manuscript: Walter Purkert of the University of Leipzig, Steven J. Dick of the US Naval Observatory, and David E. Rowe of Pace University.

Although their guidance was invaluable, they are not responsible for any errors in fact or interpretation that might appear in the book. We also want to thank the following people and organizations that made important contributions to the project at various stages: Bob Bender, our editor at Simon & Schuster; Mary Bunch, who aided in the research; Felice Levy of AEIOU, Inc., who copyedited the book and helped prepare the index; Laurie Harris Benjamin of JetSet Typography, who set the type; and Gerry Burstein of G&H SOHO, Ltd., who designed the book and whose staff prepared the layouts.

Alexander Hellemans, Hastings, United Kingdom
Bryan Bunch, Briarcliff Manor, NY

Content

1. Science before there were scientists: 2,400,000-599 BC vi
2. Egyptian medicine 2; Mesopotamian mathematics 3; Early metallurgy 6; The calendar 10 Santorini and Atlantis 15; Early measures 18
3. Greek and Hellenistic science: 600 BC-529 AD 20
4. The first scientists 21; Three classic problems 23; Maps of the World 24; The first known date 26; The Elements 31; Early atomists 32; Mathematics and mysticism 36; The Almagest 46; Classic volcanoes 54
5. Science in many lands and medieval science: 530-1452 58
6. Science in China 59; The rise of time (part one) 62; Indian science 65; The other Omar Khayyám 73; Perpetual motion 78; Impetus 84; Understanding fossils (part one) 87; The last alchemists 88
7. The Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution: 1453-1659 90
8. Peppers and a whole lot more 93; Inventing signs 94; The nature of light (part one) 96; A great scoundrel 107; 1543: a great year in publishing 108; The immutability of the heavens 114; Replacing Aristotle’s physics 118; Galileo and his telescope 126; Saturn’s rings 131; The church and science: Galileo 134; Galileo and measurement 137; A lot out of nothing (part one) 142
9. The Newtonian epoch: 1660-1734 146
10. Scientific societies 146; Newton’s Principia 148; The first statistician 150; Mad Madge 158; The velocity of light 160; The rise of time (part two) 164; The nature of light (part two) 172; Verifying Newton’s theory of gravitation 178; Phlogiston 182; Temperature 184
11. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: 1735-1819 188
12. The taming of the longitude 190; When was the Industrial Revolution? 192; Voltaire the scientist 205; The transit of Venus 214; The Lunar Society 216; Flight 232; Neptunism vs. Plutonism 234; The metric system and beyond 240; Understanding fossils (part two) 260
13. Nineteenth-century science: 1820-1984 268
14. Electricity and magnetism 270; Non-Euclidean geometry 272; The theory of evolution 275; Organic chemistry 276; Science and its former view of women 280; Predicting the planets 290; The legend of Galois 296; The cell theory 306; The nature of heat 320; From action at a distance to fields 334; The periodic table 338; Lights and lighting 354; The germ theory of disease 356; The value of pi 360; Does the ether exist? 366
15. Science in the twentieth century through World War II: 1895-1945 378
16. The quantum 380; Relativity 384; Discovering new rays 388; The electron and the atom 396; A remarkable coincidence 396; The age of the Earth 404; The size of the universe 440; Penicillin and antibiotics 452; The limits of mathematics 462; The mathematics of N. Bourbaki 471; Scientists and World War II 480
17. Science after World War II: 1946-1988 490
18. Discovering DNA 492; From tubes to chips 494; History of the computer 495; Genetic engineering 497; Creating elements 504; A lot out of nothing (part two) 506; Plate tectonics 517; Measuring with waves 520; Lasers 523; God is left-handed 528; Quasars 541; Ecology and sociobiology 544; Exploring the planets 549; New windows on the universe 553; Unifying the forces 555; The rise of catastrophism 559; Genetic markers 567; AIDS 579; Strings: reality in 10 or 11 dimensions? 595;
19. Superconductors 603; Missing mass 606
20. The coming era: 1989-2000 608
21. High-energy physics in the 1990s 613; The Human Genome Project 614;
22. The near future of space 615