to Contribute to Science

Science only knows one commandment: contribute to science. This line, spoken by the title character in Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo, inspired the title of this collection of science writing by 59 diverse authors. Most of the pieces collected by editor Edmund Blair Bolles are excerpted from texts by working scientists or natural philosophers, including George Smoot of NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer to Lucretius. Marie Curie's joy on seeing the lovely, glowing bottles of impure radium in her workroom at night is just one of the vivid images to be extracted from this volume, though with far less effort than the radium cost the Curies...

Marie Curie reminisces about her and her husband's efforts to isolate the element radium. Herodotus observes the Nile Valley and concludes that it was once under water. Carl Sagan argues against assertions that aliens regularly visit Earth. These are among the literary gems...

Edmund Blair Bolles includes in GALILEO'S COMMANDMENT. Bolles has scoured the literature of science to build a treasury that is accessible and riveting, appealing to readers unfamiliar with science yet erudite enough for the scientifically initiated reader to enjoy. The authors include scientists well-known for their writing - including Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Feynman and Charles Darwin - and scientists such as Kepler, James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Wallace, and of course Galileo himself. The writings here span time and the scientific disciplines (the earliest pieces dates to c.444 BC) and the result is a fascinating collection , ideal for browsing or for reading cover to cover...