The Age of Science: What Scientists Learned in the 20th Century - Hardcover

Gerard Piel was a founder of the revived Scientific American and served as its publisher from 1948 until his retirement in 1986. He lives in New York City.

When historians of the future come to examine western civilization in the 20th century, one area of intellectual accomplishment will stand out above all others: more than any other era before it, the 20th century was an age of science. Not only were the practical details of daily life radically transformed by the application of scientific discoveries, but our very sense of who we are, how our mind works, how our world came to be, how it works and our proper role in it, our ultimate origins, and our ultimate fate were all influenced by scientific thinking as never before in human history. In "The Scientific Era", Gerard Piel, the founding editor and publisher of "Scientific American" gives us a sweeping overview of the scientific achievements of the 20th century, with chapters on the fundamental forces of nature, the subatomic world, cosmology, the cell and molecular biology, earth history and the evolution of life, and human evolution. Beautifully written and illustrated, this is a book for the connoisseur: an elegant, informative, magisterial summation of one of the 20th century's greatest cultural achievements.