Science with its inherent tension between the known and the unknown is an inexhaustible mine
of great stories. Collected here are twenty-six among the most enchanting tales one for each
letter of the alphabet: the main characters are scientists of the highest caliber most of whom
however are unknown to the general public. This book goes from A to Z. The letter A stands for
Abel the great Norwegian mathematician here involved in an elliptic thriller about a
fundamental theorem of mathematics while the letter Z refers to Absolute Zero the ultimate
and lowest temperature limit - 273 15 degrees Celsius a value that is tremendously cooler
than the most remote corner of the Universe: the race to reach this final outpost of coldness
is not yet complete but similarly to the history books of polar explorations at the beginning
of the 20th century its pages record successes failures fierce rivalries and tragic
desperations. In between the A and the Z the other letters of the alphabet are similar to the
various stages of a very fascinating journey along the paths of science a journey in the
company of a very unique set of characters as eccentric and peculiar as those in Ulysses by
James Joyce: the French astronomer who lost everything even his mind to chase the transits of
Venus the caustic Austrian scientist who perfectly at ease with both the laws of
psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics revealed the hidden secrets of dreams and the periodic
table of chemical elements the young Indian astrophysicist who was the first to understand how
a star dies suffering the ferocious opposition of his mentor for this discovery. Or the
Hungarian physicist who struggled with his melancholy in the shadows of the desert of Los
Alamos or the French scholar who was forced to hide her femininity behind a false identity so
as to publish fundamental theorems on prime numbers. And so on and so forth. Twenty-six stories
which reveal the most authentic atmosphere of science and the lives of some of its main
players: each story can be read in quite a short period of time -- basically the time it takes
to get on and off the train between two metro stations. Largely independent from one another
these twenty-six stories make the book a harmonious polyphony of several voices: the reader can
invent his her own very personal order for the chapters simply by ordering the sequence of
letters differently. For an elementary law of Mathematics this can give rise to an
astronomically large number of possible books -- all the same but - then again - all
different. This book is therefore the ideal companion for an infinite number of real or
metaphoric journeys.
