X-Rays. Seeing the Invisible
For Christmas of 1895, in addition to the usual greeting card, physicists from all over Europe received an envelope containing the X-ray of a long-fingered hand, adorned with a large ring: it was the hand of Mrs. Röntgen, portrayed in the world’s first X-
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Giuseppe Mussardo
The ABC’s of Science
123
Giuseppe Mussardo SISSA Trieste, Italy
ISBN 978-3-030-55168-1 ISBN 978-3-030-55169-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55169-8
(eBook)
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Preface
There is a passage in Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Science for Modern Man that has always stayed with me, ever since I read it many years ago: It is one of those damn perfect phrases that push you to look beyond the usual horizons and that made Asimov the great writer that he was: Nobody can really feel comfortable in the modern world and evaluate the nature of his problems—and their possible solutions—without having an exact idea of what science is doing. Furthermore, initiation into the wonderful world of science is a source of great aesthetic satisfaction, inspiration for young people, fulfillment of the desire to know and a deeper appreciation of the admirable potential and capacity of the human mind.
I would like to add that the most authentic and genuine spirit of science emerges not only from its direct study—the effort to understand the thousands of theorems that form the architecture of mathematics or those five or six fundamental physical ideas that shape our world view—but also directly from the history of its protagonists, from their voices, from that combination of characters, scenes, and stories that form the complexity and beauty of the scientific enterprise, made of laboratory papers, notebooks full of chunks of formulae, ideas written on the margins of books, peaceful discussions, and fierce rivalries. Obviously, there is no single scientific personality: every scientist, on the contrary, is genuinely wacky, unpr
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