Jim Al-Khalili

A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance. Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?

The discovery of the nucleus transformed the past century and will revolutionize this one. Nuclear physics is one of the most exciting-and useful-branches of science. In medicine, it helps save lives through innovative medical technologies, such as the MRI, and in nuclear astrophysics, state-of-the-art theoretical and computer models account for how stars shine and describe how the chemical elements in the universe were formed. Now in its second edition, Nucleus tells the story of the nucleus from the early experimental work of the quiet New Zealander Lord Rutherford to the huge atom-smashing machines of today and beyond. Thoroughly revised and updated, the book includes the most current information on the radio dating of Earth and other planets in the Solar System, heavy-ion therapies, quark-gluon plasma and its relevance to black holes, and clarification of ab initio calculations of atomic nuclei. Lavishly illustrated and with lively prose and captivating details, this book unravels the scientific mysteries that surround the subject of the nucleus. Anyone with even a passing interest in science will delight in this guide to the nuclear age.

In Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, Jim al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world. For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. Surveying the golden age of Arabic science, Jim Al-Khalili reintroduces such figures as the Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who practised the modern scientific method over half a century before Bacon; al-Khwarizmi, the greatest mathematician of the medieval world; and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a Persian polymath to rival Leonardo da Vinci. 'Jim Al-Khalili has a passion for bringing to a wider audience not just the facts of science but its history ... Just as the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin belongs to all of us, so does that of Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham' Independent 'He has brought a great story out of the shadows' Literary Review 'His command of Arabic and mathematical physics invests his story with sympathy as well as authority' Guardian 'A fascinating and user-friendly guide' Sunday Telegraph 'This captivating book is a timely reminder of the debt owed by the West to the intellectual achievements of Arab, Persian and Muslim scholars' The Times Jim Al-Khalili OBE is Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey, where he also holds the first Surrey chair in the public engagement in science. He was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for science communication in 2007, elected Honorary Fellow of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and has also received the Institute of Physic's Public Awareness of Physics Award. Born in Baghdad, Jim was educated in Iraq until the age of 16 and it was there, being taught by Arabic teachers in Arabic that he first heard and learnt about the great Arab scientists and philosophers.

No one ever expected the atom to be as bizarre, as capricious, and as weird as it turned out to be. Its tale is one riddled with jealousy, rivalry, missed opportunities and moments of genius. Piers Bizony tells the story of the young misfit New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford, who showed that the atom consisted mainly of empty space, a discovery that turned 200 years of classical physics on its head, and the brilliant Dane, Niels Bohr, who made the next great leap into the incredible world of quantum theory. Yet he and a handful of other Young Turks in this revolutionary new science weren't prepared for the shocks that Nature had up her sleeve. At the dawn of the Atomic Age, a dangerous new force was unleashed with terrifying speed...