Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Best science book ever?

If you thought it was the The Voyage of the Beagle or The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, think again. According to a report in The Guardian, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table won the vote as the best science book ever written at an event organised by the Royal Institution in London. The Periodic Table, which was published in 1975 is a memoir of life as a Jew in Mussolini's Italy told through the science of chemistry. Levi survived Auschwitz and later became a chemist in post-war Italy before committing suicide in 1987.

The shortlist:

Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Read the whole article here.

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