The story of science and society told through the lives of twelve landmark figures.

• Aristotle • Galileo Galilei • William Harvey • Isaac Newton

• Antoine Lavoisier • Alexander von Humboldt • Michael Faraday

• Charles Darwin • Louis Pasteur • Marie Curie • Sigmund Freud

• Albert Einstein.

The World's Great Minds sets the scientific advances and (setbacks) in the broader cultural context of the society of the day, including its religious and philosophical ideas, art and politics, and the institutions and societies that are their expression. The biographical approach enables the historian to show how scientists invent, articulate and transform ideas, and gain consent for them, through observation, experiment, calculation, argument and controversy, while at the same time showing them as ordinary mortals embedded in their culture. Such a perspective involves consideration of changing ideas about the role of science in a culture, and the reasons for the continuing underrepresentation of women among scientists. ...