El. knyga: Hans Christian orsted: Reading Nature's Mind

In this powerhouse of a biography-cum-science-history, historian Dan Charly Christensen reveals Ųrsted as a brilliant, multifaceted figure - scientist, post-Kantian philosopher, educator and physical aesthetician. * Nature * Best known for his epoch-making discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, the versatile Danish physicist H. C. Ųrsted was also a cultural icon and an eminent representative of the Kantian-Romantic movement in the early nineteenth century. Only with Christensens impressively rich and detailed biography are readers presented with a full picture of Ųrsted and his time, in which his scientific work is placed in its proper social and cultural context. Combining meticulous scholarship with readability, Christensens book is a magnificent contribution to the history of science and culture that for decades will remain the authoritative biography of Ųrsted. * Helge Kragh, Aarhus University * Reading Nature's Mind is a well-written and beautifully illustrated book. It is extraordinarily detailed and leaves the reader with a through understanding not only of Ųrsted, but also of his contemporaries. * Nanna Katrine Luders Kaalund, Journal of BJHS * Few people know more about Hans Christian Ųrsted than his "accidental" discovery of electromagnetism in 1820. Dan Ch. Christensen's definitive biography of Ųrsted, now available in English, will change this. Christensen documents the intellectual and philosophical preparations that led to Ųrsted's 1820 discovery and his response to the acclaim that followed. While this book is a "must read" for historians of science, its vivid descriptions of intellectual life in the early 1800s will be equally fascinating to lay readers. Read it and enjoy it! * Andrew D. Jackson, Professor of Theoretical Physics, The Niels Bohr Institute *