Originally published: 2012.

Includes index.

In the beginning -- Needles and numbers -- Atoms and the void -- The father of medicine: Hippocrates -- The master of those who know: Aristotle -- The emperor's doctor: Galen -- Science in Islam -- Out of darkness -- Searching for the philosopher's stone -- Uncovering the human body -- Where is the centre of the universe? -- Leaning towers and telescopes: Galileo -- Round and round: Harvey -- Knowledge is power: Bacon and Descartes -- The "new chemistry" -- What goes up...: Newton -- Bright sparks -- The clockwork universe -- Ordering the world -- Airs and gases -- Tiny pieces of matter -- Forces, fields and magnetism -- Digging up dinosaurs -- The history of our planet -- The greatest show on Earth -- Little boxes of life -- Coughs, sneezes and diseases -- Engines and energy -- Tabling the elements -- Into the atom -- Radioactivity -- The game-changer: Einstein -- Moving continents -- What do we inherit? -- Where did we come from? -- Wonder drugs -- Building blocks -- Reading "the book of life": the Human Genome Project -- The big bang -- Science in our digital age.

Science is fantastic. It tells us about the infinite reaches of space, the tiniest living organism, the human body, the history of Earth. People have always been doing science because they have always wanted to make sense of the world and harness its power. From ancient Greek philosophers through Einstein and Watson and Crick to the computer-assisted scientists of today, men and women have wondered, examined, experimented, calculated, and sometimes made discoveries so earthshaking that people understood the world, or themselves, in an entirely new way. This book tells the history of science. It takes readers to the stars through the telescope, as the sun replaces the Earth at the center of our universe. It delves beneath the surface of the planet, charts the evolution of chemistry's periodic table, introduces the physics that explain electricity, gravity, and the structure of atoms. It recounts the scientific quest that revealed the DNA molecule and opened unimagined new vistas for exploration. Emphasizing surprising and personal stories of scientists both famous and unsung, this book traces the march of science through the centuries. It opens a window on the exciting and unpredictable nature of scientific activity and describes the uproar that may ensue when scientific findings challenge established ideas.