# Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science - Hardcover

by **Bill Green** (Author)

**A selection of the _Scientific American_ book club**

**Recommended by MSNBC, _Los Angeles Times_, & American Association for the Advancement of Science's _SB&F_ magazine**

"This wonderful scientific memoir captures the romance and beauty of research in precise poetic prose that is as gorgeous and evocative as anything written by Rilke, painted by Seurat, or played by Casals." --**Mary Doria Russell**, author of _Doc_ and _The Sparrow_

"A radiant love letter to science from a scientist with a poet's soul . . . Green is an exquisite writer, and his fierce focus and mastery of style are reminiscent of the biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas." --_**Kirkus Reviews**_

In _Boltzmann's Tomb_, Bill Green interweaves the story of his own lifelong evolution as a scientist, and his work in the Antarctic, with a travelogue that is a personal and universal history of science. Like Richard Holmes' _The Age of Wonder_\--this book serves as a marvelous introduction to the great figures of science. Along with lyrical meditations on the tragic life of Galileo, the wildly eccentric Tycho Brahe, and the visionary Sir Isaac Newton, Green's ruminations return throughout to the lesser-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann. Using Boltzmann's theories of randomness and entropy as a larger metaphor for the unpredictable paths that our lives take, Green shows us that science, like art, is a lived adventure.

**Bill Green** is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of _Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes_ which received the American Museum of Natural History's John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in _The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic,_ edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

  

### Author Biography

**Bill Green** is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of _Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science_ and _Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes_, which received the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Book, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in _The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic_, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Green first traveled to Antarctica in 1968 and began conducting research there in 1980. To date he has been there nine times and has published many articles on the biogeochemical processes in the pristine lakes and meltwater streams of the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

**Number of Pages:** 208

**Dimensions:** 0.9 x 9.4 x 6.2 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** June 14, 2011

## Details

- **Price:** 25.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 25.00 USD | In stock |

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- Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science - Hardcover

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