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Gratzer has informed and entertained readers of Nature with his wittily written reviews for years. He is the perfect author and editor for this hilarious compilation of scientific history, gossip and eccentricity. --Sunday Times (London)<br> Stands head and shoulders above the rest as a source of eclectic and entertaining insights into the scientific mind.... His swift word pictures of discoveries in often astounding circumstances will entertain and intrigue even the most jaded. --New Scientist<br> One can open the book at any point and be educated, thrilled, sobered or surprised, for there is astonishment and delight on every page. I, for one, will put this book next to W.H. Auden's book on aphorisms, John Bartlett's book of quotations, and that ultimate example in illustration, the great Oxford English Dictionary (OED), for finally this is a sort of OED of scientists and science, a banquet of epiphanies, a reference book which is also a work of art. --Oliver Sacks, Nature<br> Reading the table of contents of this book is like opening a box of assorted bonbons--each cryptic title entices you to sample the offering within. --Astronomy<br>

This is a splendid collection of 181 tales of the heroic, the fortuitous, the bold and the weird among the happenings and personalities in the history of science. It includes funeral orations, strange experiments and tolerant spouses (one wife willingly accompanied her husband downstairs in the middle of the night to demonstrate tortoise footprints in flour paste), plus absent-minded scientists galore, several huge doses of luck, some almighty cock-ups and quite a lot of explosions. Many people know the story of how Kekule literally dreamed up the chemical structure of benzene; perhaps fewer will have heard how physicist Neils Bohr, playing goalie for his local club, nearly let the ball through while carrying out calculations on the goalpost. It is intriguing to discover that Lord Kelvin initially believed Roentgen's paper first describing the use of X-rays was a hoax, or that Robert Boyle was a keen alchemist who searched for the 'philosopher's stone' that might turn base metals to gold. The author is a professor at King's College London whose speciality is the molecular mechanics of cell function, and who has written both books and book reviews. He has a smooth turn of phrase ('to leave bottles of laboratory preparations unlabelled is an offence against the deities of research'), pulls no punches (Newton is described as 'sour and ungenerous') and has clearly done his research well (although it is curious that he describes aspartame as having 'no pathological side-effects', a conclusion with which sufferers from the metabolic disease PKU might quibble). This is a well-chosen and intriguing collection, although as with all anthologies it's slightly difficult to know what it's for - a present for the scientist in your life? A book for laboratory technicians to keep by the loo? An aid for science writers looking for an intriguing snippet to add colour to their piece (there is an excellent index of names for the purpose)? Whatever, if you know someone who might like such a thing, they'll be well pleased with this one. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Walter Gratzer is a biophysicist at the Randall Centre for Molecular Mechanisms of Cell Function, King's College London. He is known to a wide readership through his book reviews, most of which have appeared regularly in Nature: they are invariably models of clarity and elegance. He edited The Longman Literary Companion to Science (published in the USA as The Literary Companion to Science) and The Bedside Nature, and he is author of The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty (OUP, 2000).

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