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DK Publishing 4th floor, 345 Hudson Street PROJECT ART EDITOR New York, New York 10014 Katie Cavanagh EDITORS SENIOR EDITOR Rob Colson 14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Georgina Palffy Camilla Hallinan 001–192893–July/2014 David John US EDITOR Copyright © 2014 Jane Perlmutter DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION Dorling Kindersley Limited US SENIOR EDITOR Ben Ruocco All rights reserved Margaret Parrish Without limiting the rights under MANAGING ART EDITOR DK DELHI copyright reserved above, no part Lee Griffiths of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval MANAGING EDITOR PROJECT EDITOR system, or transmitted, in any form, or Stephanie Farrow Priyaneet Singh by any means (electronic, mechanical, PUBLISHING DIRECTOR photocopying, recording, or otherwise), Jonathan Metcalf ASSISTANT ART EDITOR without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the Vidit Vashisht ART DIRECTOR above publisher of this book. 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PRODUCER Printed and bound in China Mandy Inness by Leo Paper Products Ltd. original styling by ILLUSTRATIONS STUDIO 8 Discover more at James Graham, Peter Liddiard www.dk.com CONTRIBUTORS PENNY JOHNSON Penny Johnson started out as an aeronautical engineer, working on military aircraft for 10 years ADAM HART-DAVIS, CONSULTANT EDITOR before becoming a science teacher, then a publisher producing science courses for schools. Penny has been Adam Hart-Davis trained as a chemist at the universities of a full-time educational writer for over 10 years. Oxford and York, and Alberta, Canada. He spent five years editing science books, and has been making television and DOUGLAS PALMER radio programs about science, technology, mathematics, and history, as producer and host, for 30 years. He has written 30 Douglas Palmer, a science writer based in Cambridge, books on science, technology, and history. Britain, has published more than 20 books in the last 14 years—most recently an app (NHM Evolution) for JOHN FARNDON the Natural History Museum, London, and DK’s WOW Dinosaur book for children. He is also a lecturer for the John Farndon is a science writer whose books have been University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. short-listed for the Royal Society junior science book prize four times and for the Society of Authors Education Award. His STEVE PARKER books include The Great Scientists and The Oceans Atlas. He was a contributor to DK’s Science and Science Year by Year. Steve Parker is a writer and editor of more than 300 information books specializing in science, particularly DAN GREEN biology and allied life sciences. He holds a BSc in Zoology, is a Senior Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of Dan Green is an author and science writer. He has an MA London, and has authored titles for a range of ages and in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and has publishers. Steve has received numerous awards, most written over 40 titles. He received two separate nominations recently the 2013 UK School Library Association for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2013 and Information Book Award for Science Crazy. his Basher Science series has sold over 2 million copies. GILES SPARROW DEREK HARVEY Giles Sparrow studied astronomy at University College Derek Harvey is a naturalist with a particular interest in London and Science Communication at Imperial College, evolutionary biology, and a writer for titles that include DK’s London, and is a best-selling science and astronomy author. Science and The Natural History Book. He studied Zoology at His books include Cosmos, Spaceflight, The Universe in the University of Liverpool, taught a generation of biologists, 100 Key Discoveries, and Physics in Minutes, as well as and has led expeditions to Costa Rica and Madagascar. contributions to DK books such as Universe and Space. CONTENTS 10 INTRODUCTION SCIENTIFIC THE BEGINNING REVOLUTION OF SCIENCE 1400–1700 600 –1400 BCE CE 34 At the center of everything is the Sun 20 Eclipses of the Sun can Nicolaus Copernicus be predicted Thales of Miletus 40 The orbit of every planet is an ellipse 21 Now hear the fourfold Johannes Kepler roots of everything Empedocles 42 A falling body accelerates uniformly 22 Measuring the Galileo Galilei circumference of Earth Eratosthenes 44 The globe of the Earth is a magnet 23 The human is related William Gilbert to the lower beings Al-Tusi 45 Not by arguing, but by trying Francis Bacon 55 Layers of rock form on top 46 Touching the spring of of one another the air Robert Boyle Nicolas Steno 50 Is light a particle 56 Microscopic observations or a wave? of animalcules Christiaan Huygens Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 24 A floating object displaces 52 The first observation of 58 Measuring the speed its own volume in liquid a transit of Venus of light Archimedes Jeremiah Horrocks Ole Rømer 26 The Sun is like fire, the 53 Organisms develop in 60 One species never springs Moon is like water a series of steps from the seed of another Zhang Heng Jan Swammerdam John Ray 28 Light travels in straight 54 All living things are 62 Gravity affects everything lines into our eyes composed of cells in the universe Alhazen Robert Hooke Isaac Newton EXPANDING 96 No vestige of a beginning 115 Mapping the rocks of and no prospect of an end a nation HORIZONS James Hutton William Smith 1700–1800 102 The attraction of mountains 116 She knows to what tribe Nevil Maskelyne the bones belong Mary Anning 74 Nature does not proceed 104 The mystery of nature by leaps and bounds in the structure and 118 The inheritance of Carl Linnaeus fertilization of flowers acquired characteristics Christian Sprengel Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 76 The heat that disappears in the conversion of water 105 Elements always combine 119 Every chemical compound into vapor is not lost the same way has two parts Joseph Black Joseph Proust Jöns Jakob Berzelius 78 Inflammable air 120 The electric conflict is A CENTURY Henry Cavendish not restricted to the conducting wire OF PROGRESS 80 Winds, as they come Hans Christian Ørsted nearer the equator, 1800–1900 become more easterly 121 One day, sir, you may George Hadley tax it Michael Faraday 81 A strong current comes 110 The experiments may out of the Gulf of Florida be repeated with great 122 Heat penetrates every Benjamin Franklin ease when the Sun shines substance in the universe Thomas Young Joseph Fourier 82 Dephlogisticated air Joseph Priestley 112 Ascertaining the relative 124 The artificial production weights of ultimate particles of organic substances 84 In nature, nothing is John Dalton from inorganic substances created, nothing is lost, Friedrich Wöhler everything changes 114 The chemical effects Antoine Lavoisier produced by electricity 126 Winds never blow in Humphry Davy a straight line 85 The mass of a plant comes Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis from the air Jan Ingenhousz 127 On the colored light of the binary stars 86 Discovering new planets Christian Doppler William Herschel 128 The glacier was God’s 88 The diminution of the great plough velocity of light Louis Agassiz John Michell 130 Nature can be represented 90 Setting the electric fluid as one great whole in motion Alessandro Volta Alexander von Humboldt 136 Light travels more slowly 226 Particles have wavelike in water than in air properties Léon Foucault Erwin Schrödinger 138 Living force may be 234 Uncertainty is inevitable converted into heat Werner Heisenberg James Joule 236 The universe is big… 139 Statistical analysis of 186 Rays were coming from and getting bigger molecular movement the tube Edwin Hubble Ludwig Boltzmann Wilhelm Röntgen 242 The radius of space began 140 Plastic is not what I 188 Seeing into the Earth at zero meant to invent Richard Dixon Oldham Georges Lemaître Leo Baekeland 190 Radiation is an atomic 246 Every particle of matter 142 I have called this principle property of the elements has an antimatter natural selection Marie Curie counterpart Charles Darwin Paul Dirac 196 A contagious living fluid 150 Forecasting the weather Martinus Beijerinck 248 There is an upper Robert FitzRoy limit beyond which a collapsing stellar core A PARADIGM SHIFT 156 Omne vivum ex vivo— becomes unstable all life from life Subrahmanyan 1900–1945 Louis Pasteur Chandrasekhar 160 One of the snakes 249 Life itself is a process grabbed its own tail 202 Quanta are discrete of obtaining knowledge August Kekulé packets of energy Konrad Lorenz Max Planck 166 The definitely expressed average proportion of 206 Now I know what the three to one atom looks like Gregor Mendel Ernest Rutherford 172 An evolutionary link 214 Gravity is a distortion between birds and in the space-time dinosaurs continuum Thomas Henry Huxley Albert Einstein 174 An apparent periodicity 222 Earth’s drifting continents of properties are giant pieces in an Dmitri Mendeleev ever-changing jigsaw Alfred Wegener 180 Light and magnetism are affectations of the 224 Chromosomes play a role same substance in heredity James Clerk Maxwell Thomas Hunt Morgan