Ordinary geniuses : Max Delbrück, George Gamow, and the origins of genomics and big bang cosmology / Gino Segrè.
Segrè, Gino.
2011
QH31.D434 S44 2011 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title Ordinary geniuses : Max Delbrück, George Gamow, and the origins of genomics and big bang cosmology / Gino Segrè.
Author Segrè, Gino.
ISBN 9780670022762
0670022764
Publication Details New York : Viking, 2011.
Language English
Description xxi, 330 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Call Number QH31.D434 S44 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification 572.8092 B
Summary "A biography of two maverick scientists whose intellectual wanderlust kick-started modern genomics and cosmology. Max Delbruck and George Gamow, the so-called ordinary geniuses of Segrè's third book, were not as famous or as decorated as some of their colleagues in midtwentieth-century physics, yet these two friends had a profound influence on how we now see the world, both on its largest scale (the universe) and its smallest (genetic code). Their maverick approach to research resulted in truly pioneering science. Wherever these men ventured, they were catalysts for great discoveries. Here Segrè honors them in his typically inviting and elegant style and shows readers how they were far from "ordinary". While portraying their personal lives Segrè, a scientist himself, gives readers an inside look at how science is done--collaboration, competition, the influence of politics, the role of intuition and luck, and the sense of wonder and curiosity that fuels these extraordinary minds."-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
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When Max and Geo first met
Max grows up
Geo grows up
Göttingen and Copenhagen
Particle or wave?
Max's and Geo's early careers
Copenhagen, 1931
Zurich, 1931
Max, Bohr, and biology
Max, Berlin, and biology
Geo escapes from Russia
The Russia Geo left behind
Geo comes to America
The sun's mysteries revealed
Max leaves Germany
Max in the New World
Fission.
Supernovae and neutron stars
Max meets Manny and Sal
Hitting the jackpot
What is life?
The phage grows up
Geo and the universe
Gamow's game
Bohr, Geo, and Max
Back to Germany
The new Manchester
Alpha, beta, gamma
Big Bang versus steady state
DNA
The double helix
Geo and DNA
Geo begins again
Max begins again
The molecular biology that was
The Phage Church Trinity goes to Stockholm
The triumph of the Big Bang
The cosmic microwave background radiation
Cosmology's new age
Einstein's biggest blunder
Duckling or swan?
After the Golden Age
The unavoidable and the unfashionable
Mr. Tompkins arrives
Geo's and Max's final messages.

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