Ashwin Nanjappa Male, Single. Singapore

Advice To A Young Scientist is a book by P. B. Medawar for folks keen on entering research. Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960 for his research on why immune systems reject organ transplants. Medawar's writing is meticulous and a joy to read. Though the former half of the book deals with practical information for the newbie, the latter turns into a treatise on science and the scientific method. Not bad reading at all.

bit-player is a blog authored by Brian Hayes that I read occasionally. That's where I learnt about his latest book Group Theory In The Bedroom, And Other Mathematical Diversions. It's a compilation of 12 long essays he had written for the American Scientist magazine. Written for a general scientifically oriented audience, I found most of the chapters to be fun and interesting. Brian has the gift of making complex ideas easy to understand by using simple analogies. He also researches in-depth into the history behind the science, this is something I sorely miss in most math/science writing. The humans and their stories are just as important as their ideas. This book is an interesting read.

Why are people so scared of science? Why is most of the public so illiterate about science even though they use it every second of their life?

It is these problems that NYTimes science journalist Natalie Angier attempts to solve in this book by taking the reader on a fun filled, informational ride through the entire spectrum of science. The chapters of the book deal with scientific thinking, probabilities, scales, physics, chemistry, evolution, molecular biology, geology and ends in a bang with astronomy. This is not a dull science book with figures, facts and formulas. There is none of that. Instead, Natalie attempts to do storytelling in each chapter and explains everything using fun analogies and prose.

So how is the book? I felt it was great. Everyone, no matter how science literate or illiterate he is, will gain something from this book. Natalie's prose is superlative and her analogies are really fun. Distilling the vast cloud of science into a few hundred readable pages is no easy task. I have to say that I haven't come across any work before that has achieved it like this book. Since each chapter deals with distinctly different areas of science, the book can be split over many days without any feeling of book amnesia. The only chapter where stuff went over my head was that on molecular biology, all that protein synthesis and folding was too much for me. Other than that, the book was a complete win-win. Basic science has progressed much beyond the textbooks of my school days. This book gave me a chance to catch up to some of it. I came out of this experience with a better understanding and awe for every single thing around me -- from the air I breathe to the sky I see every morning.