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STUDIO 8

Published in the United States by DK Publishing

4th floor, 345 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014

14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–192893–July/2014

Copyright © 2014 Dorling Kindersley Limited

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part

of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher of this book.

Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-1-4654-1965-1

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LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE,

MUNICH, AND DELHI

ADAM HART-DAVIS, CONSULTANT EDITOR

Adam Hart-Davis trained as a chemist at the universities of

Oxford and York, and Alberta, Canada. He spent five years

editing science books, and has been making television and

radio programs about science, technology, mathematics, and

history, as producer and host, for 30 years. He has written 30

books on science, technology, and history.

JOHN FARNDON

John Farndon is a science writer whose books have been

short-listed for the Royal Society junior science book prize four

times and for the Society of Authors Education Award. His

books include The Great Scientists and The Oceans Atlas. He

was a contributor to DK’s Science and Science Year by Year.

DAN GREEN

Dan Green is an author and science writer. He has an MA

in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and has

written over 40 titles. He received two separate nominations

for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2013 and

his Basher Science series has sold over 2 million copies.

DEREK HARVEY

Derek Harvey is a naturalist with a particular interest in

evolutionary biology, and a writer for titles that include DK’s

Science and The Natural History Book. He studied Zoology at

the University of Liverpool, taught a generation of biologists,

and has led expeditions to Costa Rica and Madagascar.

PENNY JOHNSON

Penny Johnson started out as an aeronautical

engineer, working on military aircraft for 10 years

before becoming a science teacher, then a publisher

producing science courses for schools. Penny has been

a full-time educational writer for over 10 years.

DOUGLAS PALMER

Douglas Palmer, a science writer based in Cambridge,

Britain, has published more than 20 books in the last

14 years—most recently an app (NHM Evolution) for

the Natural History Museum, London, and DK’s WOW

Dinosaur book for children. He is also a lecturer for the

University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.

STEVE PARKER

Steve Parker is a writer and editor of more than 300

information books specializing in science, particularly

biology and allied life sciences. He holds a BSc in Zoology,

is a Senior Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of

London, and has authored titles for a range of ages and

publishers. Steve has received numerous awards, most

recently the 2013 UK School Library Association

Information Book Award for Science Crazy.

GILES SPARROW

Giles Sparrow studied astronomy at University College

London and Science Communication at Imperial College,

London, and is a best-selling science and astronomy author.

His books include Cosmos, Spaceflight, The Universe in

100 Key Discoveries, and Physics in Minutes, as well as

contributions to DK books such as Universe and Space.

CONTRIBUTORS

10 INTRODUCTION

THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE600 BCE–1400 CE

20 Eclipses of the Sun can be predicted Thales of Miletus

21 Now hear the fourfold roots of everything Empedocles

22 Measuring the circumference of Earth Eratosthenes

23 The human is related to the lower beings Al-Tusi

24 A floating object displaces its own volume in liquid Archimedes

26 The Sun is like fire, the Moon is like water Zhang Heng

28 Light travels in straight lines into our eyes Alhazen

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION1400–1700

34 At the center of everything is the Sun Nicolaus Copernicus

40 The orbit of every planet is an ellipse Johannes Kepler

42 A falling body accelerates uniformly Galileo Galilei

44 The globe of the Earth is a magnet William Gilbert

45 Not by arguing, but by trying Francis Bacon

46 Touching the spring of the air Robert Boyle

50 Is light a particle or a wave? Christiaan Huygens

52 The first observation of a transit of Venus Jeremiah Horrocks

53 Organisms develop in a series of steps Jan Swammerdam

54 All living things are composed of cells Robert Hooke

CONTENTS

55 Layers of rock form on top of one another Nicolas Steno

56 Microscopic observations of animalcules Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

58 Measuring the speed of light Ole Rømer

60 One species never springs from the seed of another John Ray

62 Gravity affects everything in the universe Isaac Newton

EXPANDING HORIZONS1700–1800

74 Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds Carl Linnaeus

76 The heat that disappears in the conversion of water into vapor is not lost Joseph Black

78 Inflammable air Henry Cavendish

80 Winds, as they come nearer the equator, become more easterly George Hadley

81 A strong current comes out of the Gulf of Florida Benjamin Franklin

82 Dephlogisticated air Joseph Priestley

84 In nature, nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes Antoine Lavoisier

85 The mass of a plant comes from the air Jan Ingenhousz

86 Discovering new planets William Herschel

88 The diminution of the velocity of light John Michell

90 Setting the electric fluid in motion Alessandro Volta

96 No vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end James Hutton

102 The attraction of mountains Nevil Maskelyne

104 The mystery of nature in the structure and fertilization of flowers Christian Sprengel

105 Elements always combine the same way Joseph Proust

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS1800–1900

110 The experiments may be repeated with great ease when the Sun shines Thomas Young

112 Ascertaining the relative weights of ultimate particles John Dalton

114 The chemical effects produced by electricity Humphry Davy

115 Mapping the rocks of a nation William Smith

116 She knows to what tribe the bones belong Mary Anning

118 The inheritance of acquired characteristics Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

119 Every chemical compound has two parts Jöns Jakob Berzelius

120 The electric conflict is not restricted to the conducting wire Hans Christian Ørsted

121 One day, sir, you may tax it Michael Faraday

122 Heat penetrates every substance in the universe Joseph Fourier

124 The artificial production of organic substances from inorganic substances Friedrich Wöhler

126 Winds never blow in a straight line Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis

127 On the colored light of the binary stars Christian Doppler

128 The glacier was God’s great plough Louis Agassiz

130 Nature can be represented as one great whole Alexander von Humboldt

136 Light travels more slowly in water than in air Léon Foucault

138 Living force may be converted into heat James Joule

139 Statistical analysis of molecular movement Ludwig Boltzmann

140 Plastic is not what I meant to invent Leo Baekeland

142 I have called this principle natural selection Charles Darwin

150 Forecasting the weather Robert FitzRoy

156 Omne vivum ex vivo— all life from life Louis Pasteur

160 One of the snakes grabbed its own tail August Kekulé

166 The definitely expressed average proportion of three to one Gregor Mendel

172 An evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs Thomas Henry Huxley

174 An apparent periodicity of properties Dmitri Mendeleev

180 Light and magnetism are affectations of the same substance James Clerk Maxwell

186 Rays were coming from the tube Wilhelm Röntgen

188 Seeing into the Earth Richard Dixon Oldham

190 Radiation is an atomic property of the elements Marie Curie

196 A contagious living fluid Martinus Beijerinck

A PARADIGM SHIFT1900–1945

202 Quanta are discrete packets of energy Max Planck

206 Now I know what the atom looks like Ernest Rutherford

214 Gravity is a distortion in the space-time continuum Albert Einstein

222 Earth’s drifting continents are giant pieces in an ever-changing jigsaw Alfred Wegener

224 Chromosomes play a role in heredity Thomas Hunt Morgan

226 Particles have wavelike properties Erwin Schrödinger

234 Uncertainty is inevitable Werner Heisenberg

236 The universe is big… and getting bigger Edwin Hubble

242 The radius of space began at zero Georges Lemaître

246 Every particle of matter has an antimatter counterpart Paul Dirac

248 There is an upper limit beyond which a collapsing stellar core becomes unstable Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

249 Life itself is a process of obtaining knowledge Konrad Lorenz