Johnson’s list is eclectic and his outlook romantic. “Science in the 21st century has become industrialized,” he states, with experiments “carried out by research teams that have grown to the size of corporations.” By contrast, Johnson (a longtime contributor to The New York Times) favors artisans of the laboratory, chronicling “those rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied.”
The “materials at hand” is one thing that continually amazes me. I read details of some century-old experiment and am reminded that their apparatus and supplies were hand-crafted, often in the same lab. You read about Rutherford doing alpha-scattering experiments in pure nitrogen. Did he order a tank of compressed nitrogen from the local welding-supplies shop, like I do? Of course not.
The nitrogen was obtained by the well-known method of adding ammonium chloride to sodium nitrite, and stored over water.
(My well-known method involves the internet and a credit card)
Interesting; I’ll have to give it a look. It reminds me of another book, published in 2003, The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science. As I recall, the earlier book was based on a poll conducted amongst physicists; I wonder how Johnson chose his list?
The HTML didn’t work, so I should mention the earlier book is by Robert Crease…