Gribbin John. Science: A History 1543-2001

Penguin Books, 2002. — 647 p. — ISBN 978-0-14-104222-0.The year 1543 is a watershed in the history of science. It was then that science as we understand it today was born. Until then, rhetoric, superstition, and fanciful speculation about the natural world ruled. In 1543 Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, in which he stated that the earth moved around the sun, thereby demolishing Ptolemy's theory that the earth was the centre of the universe. Also in 1543, Vesalius, in De Humanis Corporis Fabrica, demonstrated the inaccuracies of Galenic thought about human anatomy.
In this book, John Gribbin tells the story of the people who made science and the turbulent times they lived in. As well as famous figures such as Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein, there are also the obscure, the eccentric, even the mad. This diverse cast includes, among others, Andreas Vesalius, landmark 16th-century anatomist and secret grave-robber; the flamboyant Galileo, accused of heresy for his ideas; the obsessive, competitive Newton, who wrote his rivals out of the history books; Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk who founded modern genetics; and Louis Agassiz, so determined to prove the existence of ice ages that he marched his colleagues up a mountain to show them the evidence.
John Gribbin aims to provide a biographical history of science and prove, at the same time, that science progresses in small, incremental steps taken by many researchers