Roger Highfield focuses on the intersection of science and society. His work explores how scientific discoveries impact our world and how we can best understand them. He writes accessibly and engagingly to make complex concepts understandable to a wider audience.
The book offers an unprecedented look into Stephen Hawking's office, showcasing the unique collection of his seminal papers, personal items, and curiosities. Through this remarkable acquisition by The Science Museum in 2021, readers gain insights into Hawking's groundbreaking theories and a deeper understanding of his life and work, highlighting his significance as one of the greatest minds in modern science.
A behind-the scenes tour of the inner sanctum of one of the world's most prominent scientific thinkers. In 2021, the Science Museum made a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition of the contents of Stephen Hawking's office. This book delves into that remarkable collection, using the seminal papers, items and curiosities in his office to explain his theories and reveal more about one of the greatest minds in modern science. It's an unprecedented glimpse into the life of the best-known scientist of modern times.
A renowned biologist's cutting-edge and unconventional examination of human reproduction and embryo research Scientists have long struggled to make pregnancy easier, safer, and more successful. In The Dance of Life, developmental and stem-cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz takes us to the front lines of efforts to understand the creation of a human life. She has spent two decades unraveling the mysteries of development, as a simple fertilized egg becomes a complex human being of forty trillion cells. Zernicka-Goetz's work is both incredibly practical and astonishingly vast: her groundbreaking experiments with mouse, human, and artificial embryo models give hope to how more women can sustain viable pregnancies. Set at the intersection of science's greatest powers and humanity's greatest concern, The Dance of Life is a revelatory account of the future of fertility -- and life itself.
How does life begin? What drives a newly fertilized egg to keep dividing and growing until it becomes 40 trillion cells, a greater number than stars in the galaxy? How do these cells know how to make a human, from lips to heart to toes? How does your body build itself?Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was pregnant at 42 when a routine genetic test came back with that dreaded word- abnormal. A quarter of sampled cells contained abnormalities and she was warned her baby had an increased risk of being miscarried or born with birth defects. Six months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and her research on mice embryos went on to prove that - as she had suspected - the embryo has an amazing and previously unknown ability to correct abnormal cells at an early stage of its development.The Dance of Life will take you inside the incredible world of life just as it begins and reveal the wonder of the earliest and most profound moments in how we become human. Through Magda's trailblazing research as a professor at Cambridge - where she has doubled the survival time of human embryos in the laboratory, and made the first artificial embryo-like structures from stem cells - you'll discover how early life is programmed to repair and organise itself, what this means for the future of pregnancy, and how we might one day solve IVF disorders, prevent miscarriages and learn more about the dance of life as it starts to take shape
An argument for the benefits of cloning, co-written by a scientist whose team was responsible for a famous cloned sheep, presents the reasons for his opposition to the cloning of humans and explains that cloning technology can be ethically applied to free families from serious hereditary diseases. Reprint.
Behind the magic of Harry Potter—a witty and illuminating look at the scientific principles, theories, and assumptions of the boy wizard's world, newly come to life again in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find ThemCan Fluffy the three-headed dog be explained by advances in molecular biology? Could the discovery of cosmic "gravity-shielding effects" unlock the secret to the Nimbus 2000 broomstick's ability to fly? Is the griffin really none other than the dinosaur Protoceratops? Roger Highfield, author of the critically acclaimed The Physics of Christmas, explores the fascinating links between magic and science to reveal that much of what strikes us as supremely strange in the Potter books can actually be explained by the conjurings of the scientific mind. This is the perfect guide for parents who want to teach their children science through their favorite adventures as well as for the millions of adult fans of the series intrigued by its marvels and mysteries.• An ALA Booklist Editors' Choice •From the Trade Paperback edition.
An irresistible stocking-filler: a hilarious romp through the science of Christmas.
Explores how complexity, a new way of thinking about the behaviour of interacting units, is transforming the way we think, and the assumptions that underlie conventional science. Examines the rise of the electronic computer as key and catalyst to the study of complexity; explores current innovations such as fuzzy logic, and computers which exploit quantum mechanics and run on light; and reveals cyberspace universes where organisms compete for resources as they reproduce, mutate and evolve
A shocking portrait of the greatest genius of this century. So intensely guarded & obscured were the details of Einstein's personal life that it took the authors six months to gain permission to quote from Einstein's correspondence. Even then many letters could only be paraphrased. The book reveals that the Nobel Prize-winner whose genius & work for peace have long been associated with a kind of personal nobility had an adulterous, egomaniacal & misogynist side with which very few people are familiar. "A deeply melancholic & moving tale that forces its readers to grapple with the enigma of the Einstein myth."-- The Economist
In this book physical chemist Dr Peter Coveney and award-winning science journalist Dr Roger Highfield have questioned our understanding of science with their humorous reinterpretation of the most profound aspect of time - why it points from the past to the future. The author's challenge to scientific preconceptions about the irreversibility of time is designed to link apparently irreconcilable features of science, from Einstein's obsession with causality to chaos theory, from the cause of jet lag to the Monday morning feeling.