The Invention of Clouds

A tantalizing mixture of biography, history, and science. The Invention of Clouds takes as its focus a specific scientific advance of the early nineteenth century, but it also addresses other issues of the day, such as culture, religion, aesthetics, literature etc. At the time such things weren't divided into separate disciplines, a mentality that is reflected by the book itself.It tells the story of a shy young Quaker, Luke Howard, and his pioneering work to define what had hitherto been random and unknowable structures - clouds. Howard was catapulted to fame in December 1802 when he named the clouds, a defining point in natural history and meteorology. His poetic names and groundbreaking work made him internationally famous. He became a cult figure for Romantics like Shelley and Goethe. His work is still the basis of modern meteorology, but he himself has been overlooked. In this book Hamblyn means to restore both him, his cultural context and the science he loved, to life.

Biographies & Memoirs

Richard Hamblyn

Professionals & Academics

Picador

Blending history, science and eye-witness accounts, and arranged in chapters that correspond to the four ancient elements (earth, air, fire and water), Terra is a book about life, death and natural disasters. Through four case studies - the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the European weather panics of 1783, the eruption of Krakatau in 1883 and the Hilo tsunami of 1946 - Richard Hamblyn paints a vivid picture of these turbulent events; their drama and scale; their inevitability and indiscriminate destruction.

Terra; Tales of the Earth: Four Events That Changed the World

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

Picador Hardbacks

Science. Does the word fill you with excitement, or dread, or something in-between?
Good science—and good science writing—can, and should, be something to get excited about. The extracts contained in this book span centuries and continents, but are unified by their authors’ desire to understand, explain and benefit the world in which we live.
Good Science is not necessarily a book about great scientific theories, complicated equations, or grand old men (or women) in their laboratories; instead, it’s about the places we draw our inspiration from; it’s about daily routines and sudden flashes of insight; about dedication, and, sometimes, desperation; and the small moments, questions, quests, clashes, doubts and delights that make us human.
From Galileo to Lewis Carroll, from Humphry Davy to Charles Darwin, from Marie Curie to Stephen Jay Gould, from rust to snowflakes, from the first use of the word “scientist” to the first computer, from why the sea is salty to Newtonian physics “for women,“ Good Science is a book about people, rather than scientists per se, and as such, it’s a book about politics, passion and poetry. Above all, though, it’s a book about the good that science can—and does—do.

The Art of Science: A Natural History of Ideas

Nature & Ecology

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Books by Richard Hamblyn