Skip to main content

Authors - W

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

Frans de Waal

Peter Wadhams

John Waller

Ian Walmsley

Benjamin Wardhaugh

A. E. Warren

Ian Watson

James Watson

Nigel Watson

Stephen Webb

Gavin Weightman

Steven Weinberg

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

  • A City on Mars: can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? ****
  • David Weintraub

    Andy Weir

    Michael Welland

    Wellcome (Mosaic Science)

    H. G. Wells

  • The World Set Free (SF) ***
  • World Brain (SF)  ***
  • Gary Wenk

    John Wenz

    Brad Wetzler

    David Whitehouse

    Catherine Whitlock (with Nicola Temple)

    Tom Whyntie (with Oliver Pugh)

    Norbert Wiener

    Marjorie Wieseman

    Frank Wilczek

    Sarah Wild

    Stephen Wilk

    Maurice Wilkins

    Matt Wilkinson

    Yorick Wilks

  • Artificial Intelligence: modern magic or dangerous future? ****
  • Clifford Will (with Nicolas Yunes)

    Anthony Williams (with Don Tapscott)

    J. B. Williams

    Mark Williams (with Jan Zalasiewicz)

    Paul Williams

    Sheila Williams

    Victoria Williamson

    Connie Willis

    Deborah Willis

    Jon Willis

    Christopher Wills

    Edward Wilson

    Edward Wilson (with Bert Holldobler)

    Robin Wilson

    Ian Wilmut (with Roger Highfield)

    Davey Winder

    Nick Clark Windo

    Laurie Winkless

    Emily Winterburn

    Richard Wiseman

    Peter Woit

    Maryanne Wolf

    Gene Wolfe

    Stephen Wolfram

  • Adventures of a Computational Explorer ***
  • Robert Wolke

    Comments

    Popular posts from this blog

    We Are Eating the Earth - Michael Grunwald *****

    If I'm honest, I assumed this would be another 'oh dear, we're horrible people who are terrible to the environment', worthily dull title - so I was surprised to be gripped from early on. The subject of the first chunk of the book is one man, Tim Searchinger's fight to take on the bizarrely unscientific assumption that held sway that making ethanol from corn, or burning wood chips instead of coal, was good for the environment. The problem with this fallacy, which seemed to have taken in the US governments, the EU, the UK and more was the assumption that (apart from carbon emitted in production) using these 'grown' fuels was carbon neutral, because the carbon came out of the air. The trouble is, this totally ignores that using land to grow fuel means either displacing land used to grow food, or displacing land that had trees, grass or other growing stuff on it. The outcome is that when we use 'E10' petrol (with 10% ethanol), or electricity produced by ...

    Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

    It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

    Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

    It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that â€˜Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...