Product Description

The author recounts the the stories of the people and the discoveries that led to the five most powerful and important scientific achievements in human history. In doing so, Dr Guillen reveals the secret world of mathematics. It was through the brilliance of these five fascinating people (Isaac Newton, David Bernoulli, Michael Faraday, Rudolf Clausius and Albert Einstein) that we were able to harness the power of electricity, fly in aeroplanes, land astronauts on the moon, build a nuclear bomb and understand the mortality of all life on Earth. The author brings to life the times in which each man grew up, and reveals the political debates, social upheaval, religious sanctions, family tragedies and personal ambitions that contributed to each man's inevitable place in history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235367 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
**'The eponymous mathematical syntheses are his personal selection of what we might call "equations every educated person ought to know". His objective is to chronicle their discovery, introduce the individual who had the inspiration, and outline their significance and their consequences for the world today. It is a worthy aim ... the tales are well worth the telling' IRISH TIMES **'Guillen packs a lot of fact into his story of five greats' NEW SCIENTIST

It's fun to try to guess what the five equations are before opening this book. We got three out of the five, but disagreed with Michael Guillen on the other two. Newton's law of gravity, the second law of thermodynamics and E=mc2 are the ones not in dispute, but we would have put Maxwell's equations and Schroedinger's equation ahead of the other two chosen here. Even so, this is a fun look at some important moments in history, and the people involved in those turning points in science. An easy, undemanding and informative read. (Kirkus UK)

Well, of course E = mc ; that's the last in chronological order of the five favorites that Guillen extols in this lively exposition of science for the layman. Good Morning America's science host and a Harvard instructor in physics and mathematics, Guillen (Bridges to Infinity, not reviewed) actually goes to great lengths to spare the reader the mathematical details of his equations. Instead, in showing how scientists developed these laws, he spices each chapter with emotional fervor and probes the innermost thoughts of his heroes in a way that scholarly biographers normally eschew. So, for example, we read that Isaac Newton, settled with an intellectual family after unhappier foster homes, "just that suddenly had the inkling of what it was like to feel normal," or that the younger of the Bernoulli brothers (Daniel) was "raring to flex his intellectual muscles," or that to Faraday "facts were as sacred as scriptural voices." Add to the hyperbole the bits about our heroes' childhoods, marriages, scientific rivalries, and feuds (for which the Bernoullis were justly famous), and the result is a crowd-pleasing kind of book designed to make the science as palatable as possible. In fact, Guillen succeeds. With all the juicy bits and spoon-feeding (even using words in equations before symbols), he nicely explains: Newton's law of universal gravitation (with an epilogue on space travel); Bernoulli's law of hydrodynamic pressure (with epilogue on why planes don't fall down); Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction (with epilogue on dynamos); Rudolf Clausius and the second law of thermodynamics (epilogue on entropy and the Krakatoa explosion); and Einstein on special relativity (with epilogue on the atom bomb). Great for high schoolers, the math-anxious but curious, and others who want to know - but not too much. (Kirkus Reviews)

NEW SCIENTIST
'Guillen packs a lot of fact into his story of five greats'

About the Author
Dr Michael Guillen teaches physics and mathematics in the Core Curriculum Program at Harvard University. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, and now lives just outside Boston.

Customer Reviews

Very poor potted history - not much mathematics
The book has a most impressive title. I was expecting to find out the implications of these equations and perhaps a little more mathematics.
What the book gives is a rather dubious potted history of each of the mathematicians concerned. I began to doubt the quality of the content when on reading chapter 1 (Isaac Newton) I discover that William is the King during the civil war.

Well Ok - he is an American. But I would have thought that his team of researchers would have picked this up.

Impressive title - not backed up by content
The book has a most impressive title. I was expecting to find out the implications of these equations and perhaps a little more mathematics.

What the book gives is a rather dubious potted history of each of the mathematicians concerned. I began to doubt the quality of the content when on reading chapter 1 (Issacc Newton) I discover that William is the King during the civil war.

Well Ok - he is an American. But I would have thought that his team of researchers would have picked this up.

Good - but with a serious flaw
It is difficult for me to review this book. "Five Equations That Changed The World" suffers from an anti-German stereotype the author invokes in the chapter about Einstein that I simply cannot get out of my mind. Sadly, whenever I think of this book that ugly comment is all I will think about. Except for that comment I would have given it four stars.

Aside from that, I rather liked "Five Equations That Changed The World" and would generally recommend it to the non-technical reader. Michael Guillen's choice of the five equations combines the obvious (Newton and Einstein) with the interesting, more obscure choices of Michael Faraday and Rudolph Clausius.

I especially like the way author Guillen describes the scientific and philosophical worldview into which each of his five geniuses was born. This is critical - because this is not a book about five men; it is a book about five Earth-shattering ideas that changed the way science (and eventually society) looks at the universe.

Extremely interesting is the chapter about Clausius and his formulation of the concept of entropy.

Less interesting to me was the details of each man's life. The author attributes too much importance to incidents in the lives of his subjects that have little bearing on the ideas they developed. It is evident that author Guillen holds to a strongly Judeo-Christian religious point of view. It is important to note that Guillen's religious views appear to have something to do with his selection of subjects and intrudes often in his telling of their lives. The passionate Protestant religious convictions of Faraday and Clausius is something I did not realize. I also never knew that Einstein was an ardent Zionist.

I highly recommend this book to a high school student who has to write an essay about Newton, Bernoulli, Faraday, Clausius, or Einstein. I also recommend it to adults with an interest in the historical evolution of the modern scientific worldview.