From the bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes this lyrical and insightful collection of science writing that delves into the mysteries of the scientific process—physics, astronomy, mathematics—and exposes its beauty and intrigue.
In these brilliant essays, Lightman explores the emotional life of science, the power of imagination, the creative moment, and the alternate ways in which scientists and humanists think about the world. Along the way, he provides in-depth portraits of some of the great geniuses of our time, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, and astronomer Vera Rubin. Thoughtful, beautifully written, and wonderfully original, A Sense of the Mysterious confirms Alan Lightman’s unique position at the crossroads of science and art.
Alan Lightman, an active research scientist in astronomy and physics, has taught at both Harvard and MIT. His novels include Einstein’s Dreams, which was a New York Times and international bestseller; Good Benito; The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award; and Reunion. His essays have appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Nature, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.