Before today’s teams of scientists and corporate R&D became Big Science, there was a tradition of individuals conducting science experiments in isolation: Galileo’s attempts to measure gravity, Newton sticking a needle behind his eye to figure out how light interacts with the retina, William Harvey using a tourniquet on his arm to study arteries and veins.

George Johnson returns us to the days when doing science was exciting and daring and fun (except for that needle in the eye). My favorite part of the book deals with Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. This is a story that has become distorted in psychology books. The true story is fascinating!