Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science

摘要

Edited by Ra Page Comma Press 298 pp. £9.99 (2011) From Jeremiah Horrocks's observation of the transit of Venus in 1639 to Alan Turing's revelations about morphogenesis in 1952, 'eureka' moments shift our take on the cosmos. They can also make for supercharged narratives. In 17 short stories, novelists and poets including Sean O'Brien and KateClanchy retell lightbulb moments from centuries of science. Each has an afterword by an expert, from Jim Al-Khalili on Einstein's special theory of relativity to Denis Noble on heart modelling and Giacomo Rizzolatti on mirror neurons.