Books for Xmas: Science

By GILBERT WONG books editor

Humourist P.J. O'Rourke said it best: "To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal."

Many of us appear to have done just that when we confuse science with bad or corrupt policy in scandals from mad cow disease to the bad-blood fiasco. Let's not even go deeply into the GM food debate or the after-effects suffered by veterans of the Christmas Island atomic testing. We don't blame Henry Ford for car accidents.

Despite these wider societal rumblings, the science genre has become a solid part of a publisher's wares. It's partly to do with the work of gifted interpreters, from Dava Sobel of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter fame to Stephen Jay Gould. But mostly it's because these are some of the greatest stories of our times, peopled with eccentrics, geniuses, thwarted ambition and serendipity.

Science is not embodied by the emotionless Mr Spock. Think instead of the witty, violin-playing, humanist Einstein. Speaking of which ...

E=MC2 - A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis (MacMillan, $49.95)

This is the equation everyone knows but nobody can explain. In the brief symbols are written the possibility for armageddon and a glimpse into the essence of creation, the entwined relationship of matter and energy from which all existence springs.

Bodanis, an Oxford academic, realised that the story of Einstein's famous equation was also the multi-layered tale of modern physics. Einstein's tale belongs to Rutherford, Curie, Chandrasekhar, Heisenberg, Teller, Lavoisier and a string of others. Bodanis writes simply and sometimes terrifyingly. No better example here than his description of the atomic attack on Hiroshima:

"The bomb had taken 43 seconds to fall from the B-29. There were small holes around its midpoint where wires had been tugged out of it as it dropped away: that had started the clock switches of its first arming system.

"More small holes had been drilled further back on its dark steel casing and those took in samples of air as the free fall continued. At 7000ft above the ground a barometric switch primed the second arming system ... "

Almost like a Whale by Steve Jones ($29.95, Random House)

Misunderstanding the major ideas of our times is a theme this year. Jones is a professor of genetics at University College. You might know him as the presenter of the BBC series In the Blood, a fascinating examination of genetics. He was prompted to write this "modernisation" of Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species when he could not find a biology undergraduate who had bothered to read the original.

Neither have I and, I suspect, neither have most of you. Using Darwin's template, Jones runs over the same ground. Natural selection, the imperfection of the geological record, instinct and hybridism are revisited in Jones' no-nonsense chatty prose full of engrossing details that reinforce how fundamental the theory of evolution is to biology.

The Dinosaur Hunters by Deborah Cadbury (Fourth Estate, $49.95)

Cadbury tells the story of the remarkable amateur geologists, theologians and anatomists who, at the beginning of the 19th century, recognised the importance of fossils and struggled to understand them. As is de rigueur with books on science, the interest is in what history has ignored or misinterpreted. Cadbury starts the story with Mary Anning, relegated usually to a minor part, and fellow fossil hunter Gideon Mantell, who also deserves wider recognition.

As a child in Lyme Regis, Anning helped her father collect and sell fossils - then viewed as mystical emblems - to stave off poverty. She was only 13 when she uncovered the first whole fossil skeleton of an unknown creature. This was the icthyosaurus, whose discovery electrified and bewildered scientists.

It fell to Mantell to find the first femur of what would later be identified as the giant land lizard, the iguanodon. But he, Anning and others were later overshadowed, a reminder that science can be as much about ego as endeavour.

The Wollemi Pine by James Radford (Text Publishing, $34.95)

Radford, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, broke the story of the discovery of the prehistoric pines in 1994. The discovery flashed around the world because the find was the botanic equivalent of capturing a live dinosaur. The two stands of 40 pines, named for the parkland in which they were found, are genetically identical to their prehistoric forebears.

Though the book is pitched as a scientific thriller, Radford avoids the conflict and drama between those who discovered the pines and the scientific institutions that then sought to control access. Their location remains a secret. Radford's book provides the fuller story that needed to be told.

The Sun, the Genome and the Internet by Freeman Dyson (Oxford University Press, $24.95)

Physicist Dyson has long been much more than just that. He is that rarity among scientists, someone prepared to make predictions and publicly debate the issues raised by technology.

This slim but fascinating volume is based on lectures given at the New York Public Library.

Dyson selected three technologies - solar energy, genetic engineering and the internet - that he felt would transform the next 100 years. Behind every sentence is the need for technology to be applied in the cause of social justice. His rationale is that technology gives us the means to close the gaps in global poverty rather than give a wealthy few more toys.

Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson (Wiley $27.30)

When Carl Sagan died in 1996 the New York Times ran his photograph on the front page. Though not so well-known here, the astronomer was a household name in the United States. We should recall Sagan for his sense of optimism displayed as a key supporter of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientific pessimists suggest that the reason we have not heard from any intelligent life is that the fate of such societies is self-destruction. Sagan felt that such a discovery, rather than being a kooky digression, would say more to humanity than, "We are not alone" - it would say, "We can survive."