John Gribbin

Stephen Hawking is no ordinary scientist. Perhaps more than any other scientist, he has broadened our basic understanding of the universe. His theoretical work on black holes and the origins and nature of the cosmos have been groundbreaking-if not downright revolutionary. He has also spent much of his adult life confined to a wheelchair, a victim of ALS. But his physical limitations have done nothing to confine him intellectually or hinder his scientific...

The quantum computer is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Pioneering physicists are on the brink of unlocking a new quantum universe which provides a better representation of reality than our everyday experiences and common sense ever could. The birth of quantum computers - which, like Schrödinger's famous "dead and alive" cat, rely on entities like electrons, photons, or atoms existing in two states at the same time - is set to turn the computing...

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009" John Gribbin is the author of In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (Bantam) and Deep Simplicity (Random House), among other books. He is a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. Mary Gribbin has written many books with John Gribbin, including The Science of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" (Knopf) and Richard Feynman: A Life in Science (Dutton). In 1972, when James Lovelock...

"The acclaimed author of In Search of Schrödinger's Cat searches for life on other planets. Are we alone in the universe? Surely amidst the immensity of the cosmos there must be other intelligent life out there. Don't be so sure, says John Gribbin, one of today's best popular science writers. In this fascinating and intriguing new book, Gribbin argues that the very existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos is, from an astrophysicist's...

"This book distills the history of science into 100 epic experiments that have fueled our understanding of Earth and the Universe beyond. Everything in the scientific world view is based on experiment, including observations of phenomena predicted by theories and hypotheses, such as the bending of light as it goes past the Sun. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.” From the discovery...