The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

One of the world's finest science journalists tells the story of the ten greatest scientific experiments - which in a moment profoundly changed our understanding of the universe.

Entertaining, finely crafted... there is a feast of fine science writing in this gem of a book

Johnson's essays balance human interest and scientific wonder in equal measure, making for a delicious succession of vignettes

Johnson's lively book... finds beauty throughout science - even among dead frogs and drooling dogs

Johnson manages to convey the heart-stopping wonder of discovery

In describing these beautifully simple works of genius, Johnson reveals as much about the corporatist nature of modern science as he does about early research

Johnson has a good feel for detail . . . and an easy touch with larger concepts . . . Johnson's lively book nicely evokes the lost world of the tabletop experiment .

Johnson's mix of the personal, the erudite and crystalline prose is -- like the pull of gravity (see beautiful experiment number 1) -- an irresistible force.

As a science journalist, Mr. Johnson is a seasoned translator of technical jargon. He also has a sharp eye for human plot, both in and out of the laboratory . . . a certain spirit of wonder breathes through Mr. Johnson's chapters.

A delightful read that will stimulate the scientist inside everyone

George Johnson is a science-writer for the New York Times and has also had work published in Scientific America, Time, Slate and Wired and in the collections The Best American Scientific Writing. His blog, The Cancer Chronicles, can be found at www.santafereview.com/chronicle

George Johnson tells the stories of ten beautiful experiments which changed the world. From Galileo singing to mark time as he measured the pull of gravity and Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his own eye, to Joule packing a thermometer on his honeymoon to take the temperature of waterfalls and Michelson recovering from a dark depression to discover that light moves at the same speed in every direction - these ten dedicated men employed diamonds, dogs, frogs and even their own bodies as they worked to discover the laws of nature and of the universe.

The Path to A Quantum Computer

A Shortcut Through Time

'Highly recommended... when the revolution comes don't say no one warned you' - Scotland on Sunday

Fascinating and highly accessible... Unpicking the complexities of the subject is not easy, but Johnson has done a fine job of it... [An] excellent book

Lucid and accessible... [Written with] a beguiling combination of clarity and enthusiasm

Johnson is one of the best science journalists writing today

George Johnson is a science writer for the New York Times.  He is a former Alicia Patterson Fellow, a finalist for the prestigious Aventis Prize, and a recipient of the Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The newest Pentium chip powering PCs and laptops contains 40 million electronic switches packed onto a piece of silicon about the size of a thumbnail. Several years from now, if this incredible shrinking continues, a single chip will hold a billion switches, then a trillion. The logical culmination is a computer in which the switches are so tiny that each consists of an individual atom. At that point something miraculous happens: quantum mechanics kick in. 
 
Anyone who follows the science news or watches 'Star Trek' has at least a notion of what that means: particles can be in two or more places at once. Atoms obey a peculiar logic of their own - and if it can be harnessed society will be transformed. Problems that would now take forever would be solved almost instantly. Quantum computing promises nothing less than a shortcut through time.

Strange Beauty

'A dramatic and lucid biography of Gell-Mann, one of the true geniuses of the twentieth century' Daily Telegraph

No scientist has done more to shape our understanding of the universe than Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winner considered by many colleagues to be the most brilliant physicist of his generation. His discovery of the quark and the Eightfold Way were cornerstones for all that followed in particle physics, the effort to understand the very stuff of creation, In this, the first biography of Gell-Mann, George Johnson tells the story of a remarkable life.

George Johnson

Rich and sweeping...this is a book for anyone whose life has been touched by cancer, which is just about everyone

A highly captivating book that meticulously explains the current scientific understanding of cancer

A fascinating compilation of selected discoveries in cancer research that helped shape his deeper understanding of the disease process

Johnson elegantly tells a fascinating chronological tale of cancer

He explains cancer in clear – and terrifying – terms. He has a lively scientific mind

A wonderful and yet very sad book. It weaves together an immense amount of detail on this devastating disease with a very personal and touching story

Gripping, illuminating and affecting… It turns out that Mr Johnson’s deceptively casual narrative route is cannily chosen. He wanders everywhere, an intelligent, skeptical, interested and saddened observer with no particular prejudices or axes to grind’

In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, [Johnson] takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease… In good company with the works of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese, The Cancer Chronicles is endlessly surprising and as radiant in its prose as it is authoritative in its eye-opening science

The ideal primer for those who want to know the real story of cancer, rather than the version that is usually presented in the media

Not only is Johnson an excellent explainer, but he can really write. His language is direct, his tone conversational

Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science-writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is that a revolution is now under way – an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. 
 
He combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments and scientific hypotheses, to reveal what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. His luminous accounts describe tumors that evolve like alien creatures inside the body, paleo-oncologists who uncover petrified tumors clinging to the skeletons of dinosaurs and ancient human ancestors, and the surprising reversals in science’s comprehension of the causes of cancer, with the foods we eat and environmental toxins playing a lesser role. Perhaps most fascinating of all is how cancer borrows natural processes involved in the healing of a wound or the unfolding of a human embryo and turns them against the body. 
 
Throughout his pursuit, Johnson illuminates the human experience with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies and other treatments. Provocative and intellectually vibrant, The Cancer Chronicles will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease – and provide hope for tomorrow and the future.

George Johnson

Praise for The Cancer Chronicles

Rich and sweeping...this is a book for anyone whose life has been touched by cancer, which is just about everyone

A highly captivating book that meticulously explains the current scientific understanding of cancer

A fascinating compilation of selected discoveries in cancer research that helped shape his deeper understanding of the disease process

Rich and sweeping...this is a book for anyone whose life has been touched by cancer, which is just about everyone

A highly captivating book that meticulously explains the current scientific understanding of cancer

A fascinating compilation of selected discoveries in cancer research that helped shape his deeper understanding of the disease process

Rich and sweeping...this is a book for anyone whose life has been touched by cancer, which is just about everyone

A highly captivating book that meticulously explains the current scientific understanding of cancer

A fascinating compilation of selected discoveries in cancer research that helped shape his deeper understanding of the disease process

Books by George Johnson

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