{image: The Power of Books, by Bulgarian artist
Mladen Penev}
10. Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte As you may have noticed, I, like many scientists interested in communicating results effectively and/or graphic design, am a fan of Prof. Tufte. He has created his own tiny self-publishing empire, filled with beautiful books explaining how to use words and images
together to express ideas, convey data and results, show causal relations, avoid ambiguity, and foster deep -honest- analysis, with elegance and beauty. His books are something which should be on the shelf of any professional who uses graphic information - not just the scientists, but the social scientists, journalists, and in fact, I think the artists would appreciate much of this work as well. For instance, he draws his indeed beautiful examples from scientific classics, like the notebooks of Galileo, but he's as likely to use Leonardo da Vinci or Albrect Dürer. Arguments about time series analysis are made with allusions to an 18th century treatise on the choreography of the
contredanse. He discusses diagrammatic presentations of schools of 20th century art, maps of cubist paintings and debunks a therory of mystical geometries inherent in sculpture. He uses a French
art nouveau ski manual and mid-20th century map of the area surrounding a Kyoto flower arranging school. Concepts from his other books reappear: 'sparklines' for concise communication of rich time series; the evils of 'chartjunk';
Minard's famous, and heart-wrenching flow map of the advance of Napoléon's dwindling army during the Russian campaign 1812-1813. I enjoyed his comparisons of
Feynman diagrams, circuit diagrams and John Cage's musical scores. I, as you may have gathered, love the idea of combining text and image and delight in the reproductions of the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an illustrated manuscript from 1499 in Greek, Italian and Latin, shown side-by-side with an English translation. He praises Galileo, but also, is never afraid to re-draw diagrams to illustrate his theories and philosophy of clarity, succinctness and focus in displaying graphical information. He devotes an entire chapter to the evils of Powerpoint (basically, it seems that a culture of sloppy presentations and associated thinking within NASA killed seven astronauts) and another chapter to sculpture pedestals. There is nothing, it seems, which can be seen and which communicates that he would not take on as a cause - to make more elegant and more beautiful, and allow the evidence to speak for itself. This is definitely a book for any lover of art, science and books, like me.
11. Winter in July by Doris Lessing This is a series of short stories, originally published in 1966, set in Africa (presumably Rhodesia, at the time). These are stories of English people and cultural collisions with Boers, the group dynamics of ex-patriot communities, interactions between colonists and indigenous populations (and wildlife) and how even the well-meaning, kind-hearted people can see their relationships go horribly wrong, and surprisingly, a couple of stories of ménages à trois. Lessing is and has always been a keen observer of people.
12. Mr Tompkins in Paperback by George Gamow.
George Gamow is one of the giants of 20th century nuclear and astro-physics and his
Mr Tompkins is a classic of the popularization of physics (both relativity and quantum mechanics). Known for his humour, Gamow famously once wrote a paper with
Ralph Alpher but convinced
Hans Bethe to add his name to the author list during the revision process so the paper would be known as Alpher, Bethe and Gamow. See, Lady Redjeep, Classics jokes are common in physics, if not always sophisticated; what, after all, could be simpler than α, β, γ? Much of this book, parts of which were first written in 1938, and first published in this form in 1965, are now quite out-of-date. So, it is unlikely to be read by people who are not physicists or interested in the popularization of science. But, it has its charms. Mr Thompkins - even dimmer than than your usual 'Watson' - is a bank clerk who attends a physics lecture and dreams himself a world where relativistic physics is everyday (i.e. where the speed of light is very low, and length contraction and time dilation can be observed riding a bicycle). He continues to attend the Professor's lectures (ultimately falling for and marrying his daughter, an artist). He continues to fall asleep during lectures, and dream about other worlds, where, for instance
Planck's constant is very large, and hence quantum effect are seen in billiard balls or even elephants. The stories are illustrated by John Hookham, and upon his retirement, Gamow himself. Gamow's illustrations are both amateurish, but delightfully naïve, and somewhat surreal (and remind me of a less proficient
Glen Baxter - see figure below). There is even music - including a chapter detailing an opera about the Big Bang versus steady-state models of the universe with a libretto featuring 'characters' the Abbé
Georges Lemaître, "a Russian physicist, George Gamow, who had been taking his vacation in the United States for the last three decades" (a wonderfully post-modern trick) and
Fred Hoyle. The character "George Gamow" sings "Gaily and drunkenly"
Good Abbé, ourr underrstandink
It is same in many ways.
Univerrse has been expandink
Frrom the crradle of its days.
Univerrse has been expandink
Frrom the crradle of its days.
...
and so forth. Clearly, this is a man with a sense of humour about himself. My favorite, the suave Maxwell's Demon, makes an appearance. The way he wrote his own colleagues and contemporaries into a sort of fairytale - and illustrated them too - is sort of hilarious, to the physicist. Though some cultural and gender biases, as well as particle physics from just before the conceptualization of the quark, now seem quite dated.
If you would like a similar sort of approach, with more up-to-date information, you might like the
Alice in Quantum Land by Robert Gilmore.
{Series so far:
books read,
more books read,
books read,
books read continues,
more books read,
I,
II,
III,
IV,
V,
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VII,
VIII,
IX,
X,
XI,
XII,
XIII,
XIV,
XV,
XVI,
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XIX,
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XXI,
XXII,
XXIII XXIV,
XXV,
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XXVIII,
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XXXI,
XXXII}
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On the subject of books, Faunalia suggested I try to find
The Artist's Way in the used book stores on Roncesvalles, so I go in search of
The Artist's Way and yet come out with Salman Rushdie's
Grimus, Salinger's
Catcher in the Rye to re-read, Dawkin's
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing and Saramago's
Blindness. I think this says something about me.
Today is the second annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science, Ada Lovelace Day 2010 (ALD10). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging about women in science and technology, whose accomplishments have all too often gone unrecognized or unacknowledged.
So I thought I'd tell you about of one my heroes, Ursula Franklin. I've heard her speak on more than one occasion and had the honour meeting Franklin. When I was an undergraduate in physics there were a grand total of zero female physics professors at this University, but Ursula Franklin was trained as a physicist and was working in metallurgy and material science, and had U of T's highest rank, a full University Professor, the first woman named to that post. Further she was not only a strong, fearless, advocate for women in science, but one of the more impressive individuals I've ever met. Her influence as a roll model of women in physics and engineering here cannot be overstated. I thought she was an apt choice to profile as beyond the importance and depth of her own scientific and technological output, she has been an influential writer on the politics and social impact of technology itself. 
Not that she didn't already have it, but faunalia has secured herself a free electronics 
Did I mention the GLOWING?
I convinced the MSOE folks that what we need are some interviews on the blog. Who are these scientist-artists anyway? What do they do? Well, I've posted the fist interview. Check it out. We have tiger quolls. *the cute it burns!* Watch out though - that there is a carnivorous marsupial. In fact, it is mainland Australia's largest carnivorous marsupial and considered an apex predator.* Further, there are immortal jellyfish and beautiful needle-felted sculpture animals.
