Science Book Recommendations

Working my way through The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, an exploration of the periodic table of elements, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite science books. For those of us who struggled with high school or college chemistry a book on the periodic table might not seem like a good read, but Kean blends stories of eccentric chemists with fun facts about the elements. The title comes from the element gallium, a metal that will melt in a cup of tea. Gallium was discovered by Frenchman Paul LeCoq. It's supposedly named for Gallia, the Latin name for France, but it just might be Mr. LeCoq playing on the Latin for rooster, gallus.

Two books about birds remain memorable years after I first read them. One is Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven, a fascinating book about a determined scientist researching a mysterious bird that just may be the smartest bird in the world. Heinrich has gone on to write a number of excellent wildlife books that often focus on New England. The other book is The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. The heart of the book is an experiment that should prove the reality of evolution to anyone except those blinded by a false view of religion. The problem with evolution for most people is that it takes a long time to evolve a dinosaur into a bird. So Mr. Weiner focuses on a husband and wife team who have spent their careers measuring finch beaks on a small island in the Galapagos which is influenced by El Niño. All the varieties of Galapagos finches descend from a single species and it was their diversity that turned Darwin onto the idea of natural selection. The island goes into alternate periods of dry and wet. When the island is dry almost all the plants except cacti with big seeds die and only birds with big beaks to crack the seeds can survive. If the island remained dry, the finches on the island would evolve into a species with big beaks, but because of El Niño the climate oscillates. When it's wet plants with small seeds are abundant and birds with big beaks can't eat them as effectively as those with small ones. Thus, the bird population swings back to the small beaks. Many, many other examples of observable evolution clinch the case for me.

Gravity is another scientific theory. It explains the orbit of the earth around the sun, and once upon a time, the Catholic Church had as much problem with that theory as the so-called evangelicals have with evolution today. You can read all about it in Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter although I liked her book Longitude better. Galileo died under house arrest for his heretical views in 1642. In 1992 Pope John Paul II issued a "declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo. Let's hope the scientific Dark Ages don't last 350 years in America-the Chinese aren't basing their technological advances on magic.

Two more books. Chet Raymo's The Path: A One Mile Walk Through the Universe. It's Easton. It's a great read and it's great science.