100 Books Like In the Presence of the Creator

Years ago, I decided to plunge headfirst into Newton’s great and famously daunting work, the Principia, to see what I could grasp. My education is in mathematics and physics, and I thought I’d give it a go. With Dana Densmore’s book by my side, I discovered, to my surprise, that the wonder of Newton’s achievements can be known to anyone, even to those without any particular mathematical training.

If you too are curious—and you must be—please get Dana Densmore’s remarkable book! She’s a mathematician who writes beautifully—she’ll walk you through every stage of the master’s thought. It’s a beautiful book to look at and have: Donahue’s meticulous graphics and translations in colored font are fun to pore over, alongside Dana’s intelligent commentary.

Twenty years ago, while driving to my favorite lunch-hour swimming place in Hawaii, I heard the renowned physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar being interviewed on the radio about the release of his new book on Newton’s Principia.

Chandrasekhar’s goal was to present Newton’s thought and ‘mathematical craftsmanship’ in a way accessible to the modern reader. Long an admirer of Chandra and Newton, I was sold. This labor of love is the book to read if you want to know all about how Newton did it.

But in fairness, it is not really for ‘the common reader:’ its math level varies from simple to challenging. Yet there is so much there, even if you don’t get it all. The illustrations are big and clear; his technical and historical asides are fascinating and stimulating.

This is a delightful read about a subject I’ve been attracted to for many years: gravity. The odd fact is, while we can use Newton’s laws to determine all sorts of things that gravity can do—with sufficient precision even to guide spaceships to orbits around other planets—we still don’t really know what gravity is.

The book is an extended essay about the history of our ideas about gravity’s myths, maths, and mysteries. I especially enjoyed how Panek raises and lightly touches upon so many aspects of the question, juggling it with finesse from every angle. He covers the ground long before, up to, and past Newton’s breakthrough. I particularly liked his discussion of the problem of comets in Newton’s theory. Panek concludes with recent gravity wave detections.

It was good luck when I stumbled across this marvelous Newton resource at a used bookstore in Edinburgh, Scotland. I open it frequently; arranged alphabetically, the answer always seems to be there. There are so many aspects to Newton’s life, writings, and science that a book like this—this book—is indispensable for anyone who spends time with the man or his ideas.

Running from “Aberration” to “Young, Thomas,” it encompasses everything in between: Newton’s family tree (under “Family”); writings on mechanics (under “Mechanics”); chronology, data, contents, and summaries of each edition of the Principia (under “Principia”); and details of every one of his published works (under “Works”). Of great use to me, too, are biographic summaries of his contemporaries (like Flamsteed, Halley, and Hooke), all concise and excellent.

Don’t let the length (over 900 pages) of this biography put you off. Instead, immerse yourself in the slow and powerful current of author Richard Westfall’s superbly written and richly detailed portrait of the skills, achievements, and obsessions of the singular genius that was Isaac Newton. Westfall explains in a masterful way Newton’s mathematics, his physics, his heretical theology, his fixation with alchemy, his activities running the Royal Mint, and his disputes with other scientists. These features, and Westfall’s evocative description of the intellectual and social milieu of Newton’s 17th-century world, make Never at Rest a compelling read.   

Yes, yes, history is an unbroken river of themes, but it’s also a chain of pivotal dramatic episodes. Dolnick gives us one such moment. In 17th century Europe, within two generations, a collection of brilliant oddballs invented science. They’re people, so they’re doing the sorts of things people do, elbowing and shoving one another to find the ultimate truth before the other guy. I appreciate that in the course of reading such a wonderfully enjoyable story, I somehow learn a great deal about the truth they were seeking, the underlying mathematical order of the universe in which they believed.

Dirac was one of the creators of modern quantum physics. His theoretical contributions are astonishing in their insights and their power. He was, as the title says, a very strange man: painfully shy, laconic in the extreme, and socially awkward. He spoke so rarely that his colleagues at Cambridge used to joke that “a dirac” was a unit of measurement equal to one word an hour. Farmelo is a fine writer and gives a lay reader a deep understanding of why Dirac is considered such a giant in the field.

For my money, Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century. His notebooks detailing his achievements in electrochemistry and electromagnetism should be read by every budding experimentalist as models to emulate. The late Sir John Thomas, a distinguished solid-state chemist, wrote this short biography (only 234 pages) of Faraday during his tenure as the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.  Thomas’ scientific expertise, his insider status, and his graceful writing style led him to produce a real gem. Enjoy yourself as Thomas recounts Faraday’s ascent at the Royal Institution from laboratory assistant to full professor, his scientific work, his private life, and his unmatched skill as a popularizer of science. 

I was enthralled by the suspense in this book! Multiple levels of mystery–from anti-government plots to supernatural senses–tugged me along and kept me turning pages past my bedtime! I appreciated that the supernatural element was explained scientifically yet subtly enough that I felt really smart putting it together.

The themes of choice, coincidence, and the ripple effect were so fascinating and intriguing, and well-explored in an entertaining, thrilling way.

This is probably the book I study the most when researching Einstein. Although comprehensive in scope, it is still easy to navigate, with clear chapter headings that allow the reader to find information quickly. While many people hear the word "encyclopedia" and expect dry and dull prose, that is not the case here, for it is a book designed to be read, not merely consulted. Near the end of the book, there is a chronological list of Einstein's papers with concise descriptions. This is a gift to anyone interested in Einstein's scientific life, since the authors make even the most difficult of Einstein's papers seem approachable.