CONQUEST: A Book About Scientists, Their Inquiries and Achievements

Embarking with the assurance that science is ""a human activity...invented by man in an effort to understand nature and himself"", this book proceeds to explore man's investigation of the elements within and without himself. Aimed to show the recent achievements and aspirations of scientists, to give some background information to permit the reader a fuller understanding of science stories, it deals with its material under such titles as: Can You Understand Relativity? Man Steps into Space, At the Bottom of the Sea, The Edge of Life: Viruses, The Batteries We Are Born With, Can Man Live Forever? The style is accessible and lively and eschews the technical, giving the reader a chance to dip into scientific waters through simple but meaningful experiments, each at one time or another a milestone in science -- some reported on as performed by scientists, some to be performed by the more curious reader. Photographs of leading scientists with some biographical material give a sense of the here-and-now -- and the who as well as how of science. Much of this material was drawn from 700 Science Experiments for Everyone, compiled by UNESCO, published in 1958 by Doubleday. Over-simplified for adult readers, perhaps.