Penguin Books Australia

'I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers' John von Neumann

How did computers take over the world? In late 1945, a small group of brilliant engineers and mathematicians gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their ostensible goal was to build a computer that would be instrumental in the US government's...

'It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.'
- Loren Eiseley

'Jim Al-Khalili has a passion for bringing to a wider audience not just the facts of science but its history . . . Just as the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin belongs to all of us, so does that of Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham' Independent 

Renaissance diplomat and part-time spy, William Hakluyt was also England's first serious geographer, gathering together a wealth of accounts about the wide-ranging travels and discoveries of the sixteenth-century English. One of the epics of this great period of expansion, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation describes, in the words of the explorers themselves...

For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. In Pathfinders , Jim Al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten inspiring pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world.

The complete illustrated science encyclopedia covering the history, key discoveries, inventions and people.

This remarkable reference book reveals the story of scientific progress from the invention of the wheel to 21st-century climate solutions, including everything from ancient Greek geometry and quantum physics to the worldwide web.

Explore every key moment of scientific discovery and find out how...

The world we live in is stranger than we can possibly imagine. The closest we've got to understanding it - so far - is with quantum physics. But what is quantum physics? And how, exactly, can it help us make sense of the universe?

In The Quantum Universe , Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw give us the real science behind the bizarre, wonderful, mind-boggling behaviour of the atoms and energy that make up...

'Entertaining . . . clear-sighted and intelligent' New Yorker

'It fizzes' Financial Times

'Packed with excellent stuff' Russell Davies

In 1794, Joseph Priestley – amateur scientist, ordained minister and radical thinker – set sail for America to escape persecution. Steven Johnson tells his incredible story: the discovery of oxygen, the invention of a science, the founding of a church, and...