New York Times Bestseller: This life story of the quirky physicist is “a thorough and masterful portrait of one of the great minds of the century” (The New York Review of Books). Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned...

"In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything--at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project,...

Looks at the life and career of the physician and NASA astronaut who became the first American woman in space in 1983.

They were leaning over the edge of the unknown and afraid of what they would discover there: Meet the World War II female scientists who worked in the secret sites of the Manhattan Project. Recruited not only from labs and universities from across the United States but also from countries abroad, these scientists helped in -- and often initiated -- the development of the atomic bomb, taking starring roles in the Manhattan Project. In fact, their involvement...

Describes how Leslie Richard Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers enlisted the help of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer on a three-year collaboration that resulted in the U.S. beating the Nazis to the invention of the atomic bomb.