Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J.S. Haldane - Rilegato

Goodman, Martin

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0743285972 ISBN 13: 9780743285971

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2007

Riassunto

John Scott Haldane (1860-1936) was one of the greatest and most colourful of British scientists, acknowledged as the leading physiologist of the era at a time when physiology and much of medical science was coming into its own. The most successful serial self-experimenter in the history of science, Haldane crawled through the carnage of underground explosions, locked himself in sealed chambers, breathed in lethal cocktails of gases, sampled his own blood, burned and healed his own flesh, and experimented on his own children, in an obsessional push to understand the nature of human respiration. What is expired air? How can you make coalmines safer? What does carbon monoxide do to people? These are just some of the vital questions to which Haldane provided the answers, saving thousands of lives in the process. He also designed the first space-suit and invented the gas-mask, among many other innovations and contributions we still benefit from today. Entertaining and enlightening in equal measure, Martin Goodman's lively and revealing biography casts new light on one of the greatest eccentrics of British scientific and intellectual life.

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Recensione

'Fascinating... His discoveries not only made life safer for miners and slum-dwellers, but enable today's divers, mountaineers and astronauts to breathe artificial gases at greater depths, higher altitudes and in emptier space than should be humanly possible. Goodman writes enchantingly if waywardly of this beguiling man'
Literary Review August '07

‘The physiologist J.S. Haldane was genial, serious, and extremely Victorian. He was an obstinate man of principle. He was a rigorous experimentalist with a philosophical bent...But he was also – as Martin Goodman’s subtitle hints – a hard-charging inquirer into all corners of his chosen field; above all, the mechanisms of respiration...In Haldane, Goodman has hit on a really fascinating subject.’
The Spectator 4/8
‘There is something very appealing about the idea of a scientist doing experiments on himself – except, perhaps, when the experiments involve suffocation. The idea of a chap deliberately starving himself of oxygen in a sealed cabinet, and noting the physiological effects – Ten minutes, lips turn blue; 20 minutes, blinding headache and knocking feebly on glass, mouthing “Get me out of here” – is surely quite horrifying’
Lynne Truss, Sunday Times 5/8
‘[Goodman] has a novelist’s eye for evocative detail that lesser writers might miss and the result is as compelling as a historical novel... A friend described [Haldane] as “almost quixotically anxious to do good to all mankind – and to teach them all a thing or two”. As Goodman’s fine biography shows, we still have a lot to learn from Dr J.S. Haldane’
The Times 4/8
'There is hardly any aspect of contemporary life on which JS Haldane has not left his fingerprints. Born in 1860, he was the kind of scientist who deserves the accolade 'visionary'. Space travel, deep-sea diving and mining are all much safer than they would otherwise have been, thanks to his enthusiastic and courageous contributions. What makes Haldane's dedication to the pursuit of knowledge so remarkable is that he would test his theories and inventions on himself'
Mail on Sunday 19/8

'[Goodman] successfully avoids what might have been a dry academic study and delivers - to use Victorian terminology - a darn good yarn about a darn good man while weaving through a maze of scientific facts and figures'
Scotsman 11/8

'Goodman has put together a fascinating portrait of an indomitable Victorian who deserves to be better understood and celebrated'
Christopher Hudson, Daily Mail 17/8

EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson - 9781847370488
'In the end, Einstein left his mark on the world because he always had the courage to stand up to conventional wisdom and was never afraid to ask seemingly naïve questions, most of which began with the words "what if?". This tendency to rebel was the source of his creativity and his real talent was an ability to focus on mundane things that his contemporaries had overlooked. He has always deserved a biography that radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence - and now, thanks to Walter Isaacson, he finally has one'
Sunday Business Post (Ireland) 5/8
'Haldane seems to have been a man without guile who commanded affection from his colleagues and students, as well as for this biographer. Martin Goodman offers us a rounded portrait that does justice to both Haldane the man and Haldane the scientist' Times Higher Education Supplement 12/10
'Thrilling... Adventurous to the point of recklessness, the Victorian scientist - responsible, among other things, for the use of canaries to detect carbon monoxide in mineshafts - would routinely gas himself to test the effect of poisons, or, though unable to swim, would jump overboard in a diving suit to study the bends'
Tim Martin, Biographies of the Year Daily Telegraph 24/11
'Highly enjoyable. It is a fitting tribute to a pioneer who enabled the human body to survive at the extremes of modern life'
Nature Magazine, Nov '07
‘They don't make scientists like they used to, if this book is anything to go by. During the course of it, the heroic JS Haldane repeatedly gasses and asphyxiates himself, and even experiments on his six-year-old son by standing him in a cloud of methane and making him recite Shakespeare until he collapses (Haldane Jr survived to become the slightly more famous scientist JBS Haldane). JS was eccentric but he wasn't wasting his time - his achievements include gas masks, decompression chambers, and the famous miner's canary. This was humanely housed in the ingenious "Haldane Box"; when the bird gave the alarm by falling off it perch, a little cylinder of oxygen in the carrying handle would revive it as the miners escaped’
The Sunday Times 26/8

L'autore

Martin Goodman is the acclaimed author of many works of both fiction and non-fiction. His novel On Bended Knees (1992) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, and he has written for, among others, the Guardian, Financial Times and New York Observer. Martin also teaches Creative Writing at Plymouth University. He currently lives in north London. His website is www.martingoodman.com.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0743285972
• ISBN 13: 9780743285971
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 320
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Simone Casetta; 0039 275422215; casetta@mondadori.it; ; Via Mondadori 1,; Segrate Milano; 20090; Italia