Bill Bryson gets back on the science history trail.
I haven’t read anything by De Moins’ prodigal wonderer since his almost all encompassing A short history of nearly everything, which I finally finished off on my own travels in Vietnam. Fortunately, he’s back again with more scientific wonders from the past.
Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, Seeing further: The history of science at the Royal Academy is available now in hardback (released 7th Jan 2010) and recounts the glorious history of science at the Royal Academy since its inception in 1660 to the present day.
Beautifully illustrated and including contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick and Neal Stephenson amongst others, Seeing further is an important aide-mémoir to 350 years of scientific discovery.
Since a bleak November evening in 1660 when the Royal Academy was founded after a group of scientists heard a young Christopher Wren lecture on astronomy at the the Gresham College in London, it has included some of science’s greatest minds, including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Locke and Alexander Fleming. With such a history to live up to, Seeing further has a lot resting on its hard back spine.
