A fascinating picture of a scientist whose distinguished career deserves to be better known.
The awe-inspiring aurora borealis was, appropriately, first explained by a Norwegian scientist, whose story Jago sets forth.
Jago, a London-based TV journalist, begins by showing Kristian Birkeland (1868–1917) on his first Arctic expedition, in 1899, to Finnmark in the far north of Norway. At 31, Birkeland had shown unusual aptitude at science and only a year before had become a professor of physics at Norway’s only university. More accustomed to the laboratory than to the demanding Arctic weather he and his assistants were about to face, Birkeland had a theory that the aurora was caused by solar particles entering Earth’s magnetic field. After an incredibly harsh winter featuring high winds that nearly destroyed the scientists’ rude shelter and an avalanche that killed one of his assistants, Birkeland had his data. But time to analyze and publish the results was hard to come by, and the expedition had already wildly exceeded its budget. To free himself from the demands of teaching, Birkeland began to search for some patentable process to provide cash that would support full-time research. After several time-consuming projects, he perfected a method for extracting atmospheric nitrogen, in demand as the basis for synthetic fertilizers. Meanwhile, his explanation of the aurora (bolstered by some fascinating laboratory work) fell flat because he still could not explain how solar particles reached Earth. Nationalist rivalries in the pre–WWI era further undermined Birkeland’s ability to make his mark: A staunch Norwegian patriot, he faced condescension from the then-dominant German and British scientific establishments. His frustrating final days were spent in exile in Egypt, then in Japan, where he died, his theories still rejected—although they are now considered proven.
A fascinating picture of a scientist whose distinguished career deserves to be better known.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-40980-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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