Volume 93 | Number 6 | November-December 2005
Diana Lutz
A review of The Velocity of Honey and More Science of Everyday Life, by Jay Ingram. A playful look at a few of science's less pressing questions.
Vaclav Smil
A review of Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare, by Daniel Charles. Haber's discovery of how to synthesize ammonia helped to shape both modern agriculture and modern war.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
A review of The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, by Leslie Berlin. Noyce, the coinventor of the integrated circuit, was as much a social and economic innovator as a technical one.
Amos Esty
A review of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, by Kerry Emanuel. Emanuel explains how hurricanes work and examines their impact on human history.
Sean Carroll
A review of Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, by Lisa Randall, and Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, by Michio Kaku. These two books, whose similarities are mostly superficial, both do an excellent job of explaining esoteric concepts. Warped Passages also serves as a window onto the way that modern physics is really done.
Christopher Brodie
A review of Earthsong, by Bernhard Edmaier. Aerial photographs of surprising power and beauty.
Brian Hayes
A review of Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy, by Tim Roughgarden. What does the privilege of choosing our routes without regard for the common good cost us?
David Schoonmaker
A review of The Best American Science Writing 2005, edited by Alan Lightman. A review of some of the year's most entertaining and informative science journalism.
George Webb
A review of The Evolution-Creation Struggle, by Michael Ruse. Ruse traces the present conflict between evolutionists and creationists back to a crisis of faith during the Enlightenment. (Also see our recent interview with Ruse.)
Total Records : 15
About once a month at Sigma Xi headquarters, we liven up the lunch hour with an American Scientist Pizza Lunch talk. In these informal lectures, scientists describe new research to nonscientists. The series is light on jargon but heavy on solid science. Each Pizza Lunch offers an in-depth look at its subject, whether it's bedbugs or the smart grid. Click below to read about and download these talks -- and to subscribe!
