Skip to main content

Authors - V

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z


Luigi Vacca

Shannon Valor

Borin van Loon (with Jonathan Miller)

Borin van Loon (with Nigel Benson)

Tony Veale (with Mike Cook)

Vlatko Vedral

Mark Vellend

Nieske Vergunst (with Bennie Mols)

Surendra Verma

Alice Vernon

  • Ghosted: a history of ghost hunting and why we keep looking ****
  • Frank Verstraete (with Céline Broeckaert)

  • Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics (and everyone needs to know something about it) **
  • Timothy Verstynen (with Bradley Voytek)

    Giovanni Vignale

    Alex Vilenkin (with Delia Perlov)

    Gaia Vince

  • Nomad Century: how to survive the climate upheaval *****
  • James Vincent

  • Beyond Measure: the hidden history of measurement from cubits to quantum constants *****
  • Andrew Viner

  • Venn that Tune ****
  • Sherryl Vint

    Claudio Vita-Finzi

    Ron Voller

    Mark Vonhoenacker

    Bradley Voytek (with Timothy Verstynen)

    Comments

    Popular posts from this blog

    The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

    In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

    Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

    In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...

    Nanotechnology - Rahul Rao ****

    There was a time when nanotechnology was both going to transform the world and wipe us out - a similar position to our view of AI today. On the positive transformation side there was K. Eric Drexler's visions in the 1986 Engines of Creation. Arguably as much science fiction as engineering possibilities, it predicted the ability to use vast armies of assemblers to put objects together from individual atoms.  On the negative side was the vision of grey goo, out of control nanotechnology consuming all in its path as it made more and more copies of itself. In 2003, for instance, the then Prince Charles made the headlines  when newspapers reported ‘The prince has raised the spectre of the “grey goo” catastrophe in which sub-microscopic machines designed to share intelligence and replicate themselves take over and devour the planet.’ These days the expectations have been eased down a notch or two. Where nanotechnology has succeeded, it has been with the likes of atom-thick mat...