ISBN: 9789385755057    Publisher: Speaking Tiger Year of publishing: 2015     Format:  Paperback Language: English

When acclaimed science writer Stefan Klein asks Nobel Prize- winning chemist Roald Hoffmann what sets scientists apart, Hoffmann says, 'First and foremost, curiosity.' In this collection of intimate conversations with nineteen of the world's best-known scientists, Klein lets us listen in as today's leading minds reveal what they still hope to discover--and how their paradigm-changing work entwines with their lives outside the lab. From the sports car that physicist Steven Weinberg says helped him on his quest for 'the theory of everything' to the jazz musicians who gave psychologist Alison Gopnik new insight into raising children, scientists explain how they find inspiration everywhere. Hear from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on selfishness; anthropologist Sarah Hrdy on motherhood; primatologist Jane Goodall on animal behaviour; neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran on consciousness; geographer Jared Diamond on chance in history; and other luminaries!
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Stefan Klein, PhD, has studied physics and analytical philosophy, and holds a doctorate in biophysics. After several years as an academic researcher, he turned to writing about science for a general audience. From 1996 to 1999, he was an editor at Der Spiegel, Germany's leading news magazine, and in 1998 he won the prestigious Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism. Today, Klein is recognised as one of Europe's most influential science writers and journalists. His interviews with the world's leading scientists are a regular feature in Germany's Zeit magazine. His books, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, include the international bestseller The Science of Happiness, as well as The Secret Pulse of Time, and Leonardo's Legacy. A frequent speaker and university guest lecturer, he lives with his family in Berlin. The Translator Ross Benjamin is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. He has received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Translation. He is currently at work on a translation of Franz Kafka's complete Diaries, to be published by Liveright/Norton.
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