While the memoirs of many scientists are probably best kept for family consumption, there are some breakthroughs where the story is sufficiently engaging that it can be fascinating to get an inside view on what really happened. Although Theodore Maiman's autobiographical book is not a slick, journalist-polished account, it is very effective at highlighting two significant narratives - how Maiman was able to construct the first ever laser, despite having far fewer resources than many of his competitors, and how 'establishment' academic physicists, particularly in the US, tried to minimise his achievement. On the straight autobiographical side, we get some early background and discover how Maiman combined degrees in electrical engineering and physics to have an unusually strong mix of the practical and the theoretical. Rather than go into academia after his doctorate, he went into industry - which seems to have been responsible for the backlash against his invention, whic...

** UPDATED - new edition with Browsing section of classic light papers ** Light Years  tells the story of light through the remarkable people who have been captivated by it. From Neolithic man’s worship of light at Stonehenge to the Impressionists’revolutionary observations of light in painting and the shattering conclusions of Einstein and Feynman, Light Years explores each stage of this extraordinary saga of discovery. Brian Clegg weaves an entertaining history of humanity’s interaction with light, combining the gradual development of our understanding of what light is, insights into the lives of those who have tried to uncover light’s secrets, and the latest applications of light, with speculation on what light is likely to make possible in the future. Clegg asserts that light is at the very heart of our existence. Without a dancing web of photons knitting atoms together, there would be no matter, no universe. Without light-driven photosynthesis producing plant-life an...

It's fitting that light should be added as a topic to the OUP's growing range of mini-guides in 2015, as this is the International Year of Light (though, to be honest, the year seems to have been a nonstarter of an event). Light is a remarkable phenomenon and one that we rarely think about considering how big a part it plays in our lives. Ian Walmsley begins by outlining the reasons why light is so important, over and above the mechanism of sight, and gives a very brief historical view of some of the ideas on the nature of light. I was not impressed by his characterisation of Roger Bacon as the 'mad friar of Oxford', but that apart, though fleeting, the historical section was a reasonable gallop through the topic. For the rest of the content, Walmsley describes optics, light as particles, waves and as a duality in the form of a quantum field. He takes quite an unusual route in doing this and I think it would be easy for a non-technical reader to get somewhat los...

I am very fond of Cambridge University Press, so it truly pains me that I can't say much that is positive about this glossy, slim book which claims to help us explore the multitude of ways that light-based technologies are shaping our society. There's a certain class of book sometimes called in the trade 'business vanity publishing', where a company or organization pays for a book to be produced about themselves. Inevitably no one ever wants to buy them, they are just given away as promotional items. And that's exactly what this book feels like. The book consists of 16 sections (it calls them chapters, but they're too short for that), all in the same format. To pick one at random, titled 'Virus Attack - but don't panic', it starts with a page of text about a virologist using a microscope to study virus-cell interactions, in the form of supposed plot of a science fiction movie (though possibly the dullest movie ever made). There's then a page ...