Lucan’s famous dictum that those standing on the shoulders of giants see farther than the giants themselves applies to no human endeavor more thoroughly than to the “pure” sciences: astronomy, chemistry, biology, ge- ology, mathematics, physics, and the many subdisciplines they have spawned. The three volumes of Science and Scientists documents 245 of the most important breakthroughs in the history of science, cross-referenced to link those that built on others, from ancient times to the present day. These essays are accompanied by biographical sidebars on many of the giants be- hind the discoveries, as well as charts and schematics illustrating many of the basic concepts.
The disciplines covered here are broad, including Anthropology, Ar- chaeology, Astronomy and Cosmology, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Sci- ence, Earth Science, Environmental Science, Evolution, Genetics, Mathe- matics, Medicine, Meteorology, Methods, Paleontology, Physics, Psychology, and Space Science. Arranged alphabetically, these essays ad- dress the most important breakthroughs in these fields, ranging from Ab- stract Algebra to Quantum Mechanics, from the Big Bang to X-Ray Astron- omy, from Antisepsis to Viruses.