Cambridge University's Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics is one of the world's most celebrated academic positions. Since its foundation in 1663, the chair has been held by seventeen men who represent some of the most influential minds in science and technology. Principally a social history of mathematics and physics, the story of these great natural philosophers and mathematical physicists is told here by some of the finest historians of science. This informative work offers new perspectives on world famous scientists including Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking was widely recognized as the world's best physicist and even the most brilliant man alive–but what if his true talent was self-promotion? When Stephen Hawking died, he was widely recognized as the world's best physicist, and even its smartest person. He was neither. In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife explores how Stephen Hawking came to be thought of as humanity's greatest genius. Hawking spent his career grappling with deep questions in physics, but his renown didn't rest on his science. He was a master of self-promotion, hosting parties for time travelers, declaring victory over problems he had not solved, and wooing billionaires. In a wheelchair and physically dependent on a cadre of devotees, Hawking still managed to captivate the people around him—and use them for his own purposes. A brilliant exposé and powerful biography, Hawking Hawking uncovers the authentic Hawking buried underneath the fake. It is the story of a man whose brilliance in physics was matched by his genius for building his own myth.

Stephen Hawking explains how such great men of science as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Einstein built on the discoveries of those who came before them, and how these works changed the course of science, ushering astronomy and physics out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world.

Stephen W. Hawking, widely believed to have been one of be one of the world’s greatest minds, presents a series of seven lectures— covering everything from big bang to black holes to string theory—. These lectures not only capture the brilliance of Hawking’'s mind, but his characteristic wit as well. In The Illustrated Theory of Everything, Hawking begins with a history of ideas about the universe, from Aristotle’s determination that the Earth is round to Hubble’s discovery, more than 2,000 years later, that the universe is expanding. Using that as a launching pad, he explores the reaches of modern physics, including theories on the origin of the universe (e.g., the Big Bang), the nature of black holes, and space-time. Finally, he poses the questions left unanswered by modern physics, especially how to combine all the partial theories into a “unified theory of everything.” “If we find the answer to that,” he claims, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason.” A great popularizer of science as well as a brilliant scientist, Hawking believes that advances in theoretical science should be “understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.” In this book, he offers a fascinating voyage of discovery about the cosmos and our place in it. It is a book for anyone who has ever gazed at the night sky and wondered what was up there and how it came to be.

A collection of reviews by prominent researchers in cosmology, relativity and particle physics commemorates the 300th anniversary of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg has written that "all that has happened since 1687 is a gloss on the Principia." Now you too can appreciate the significance of this stellar work, regarded by many as the greatest scientific contribution of all time. Despite its dazzling reputation, Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or simply the Principia, remains a mystery for many people. Few of even the most intellectually curious readers, including professional scientists and mathematicians, have actually looked in the Principia or appreciate its contents. Mathematician Pask seeks to remedy this deficit in this accessible guided tour through Newton's masterpiece. Using the final edition of the Principia, Pask clearly demonstrates how it sets out Newton's (and now our) approach to science; how the framework of classical mechanics is established; how terrestrial phenomena like the tides and projectile motion are explained; and how we can understand the dynamics of the solar system and the paths of comets. He also includes scene-setting chapters about Newton himself and scientific developments in his time, as well as chapters about the reception and influence of the Principia up to the present day.