Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating. Couldn't put it down.
Review: Michael Guillen is one of the few writers who successfully bridges the gap between die-hard scientist and master storyteller. This book will soak you with deeply human stories of struggle and triumph, combined elegantly with the mathematical mechanics of the natural laws that shape our everyday world. At best, the book will enlighten you and renew your interest in science. At worst, you'll have some neat stories to impress friends at your next cocktail party. Either way, read this book
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Summary: Well-Done Mixing of Humanity with Science
Review: Michael Guillen writes in a very interesting style that makes these long-dead men of science come alive. One would not think that a book with such a title could be so interesting. He writes of five men with outstanding accomplishments, but is able to provide insight on some of the simple turning points in their lives away from science and math. This book could be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history, although unfortunately the title may turn off many. Read the book.
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Summary: science brought home
Review: my husband (who is Stanford M.D.)and I(Beloit CollegeB.A.) were both impressed by this book. It shows how easily a great mind can make the jump from noticimg some common occurrence to realizing its application to a vast and important universal application.
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Summary: It Changed My World
Review: Our discussion group has just finished reading this, and the verdict is unanimous: Five Stars! For me, a Registered Nurse, the book brought to life what were once merely dry, colorless historic characters; I can picture them now, thanks to Dr. Guillen's brillant writing.I've also just finished reading the other reviews recorded here and am glad to see that most others also heartily endorse this fabulous book. But frankly, I'm surprised and shocked at the nastiness of one or two of the other reviews. Literary criticism is one thing; viciousness is another. Regarding the lack of a bibliography or footnotes, I say: who cares? This book was obviously written for the average, albeit intelligent non scientist like me, it wasn't meant to be a PhD thesis. If you want footnotes, subscribe to the professional journal of the American Mathematics Association, and good luck. Regarding Dr. Guillen assigning thoughts and emotions to the principals, that's pretty obvious, and hardly sinister. Only an incredibly simple minded person would assume that Dr. Guillen was somehow trying to trick the reader into believing he knew with certainty what was going through the scientists' minds. It was a no brainer to me that Dr. Guillen, with Phd's in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, would be careful to weave these so effectively in his book only on the basis of his extensive research. Even though there's no bibliography, one can get a sense of the depth and breadth of his resources from the acknowledgements in the beginning of the book. Regarding errors, who has ever written an error free book? Isn't that what errata sheets are for? In addition, what may seem to be an error may only be an honest difference of opinion about how a technical idea can best be explained to a lay audience. I believe that Dr. Guillen's amazing ability to demystify heady topics that for too long have been understood only by the high priests of science must necessarily involve simplifying things that some close-minded "know it alls", would brand as errors. For example, Dr. Guillen is critized for writing that a circle is a two-dimensional sphere. Well, during our meetings, one member of our group, an engineer, pointed out that a circle drawn on a sheet of paper does exist in a two-dimensional plane. And if you imagine spinning the circle around its diameter, you get a sphere, which is three dimensional. Here's tha bottom line for me: Five Equations that Changed the World is a unique, fascinating book that taught me a lot about a subject I absolutely hated in school. Now that I've read it, I can see why it was picked Best Book of the Year by Publisher's Weekly. If You buy one book about mathmatics and mathematicians in your lifetime, this should be it! It could change your world too.
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Summary: Page turner. Reads like an adventure story.
Review: Should be on every Jr. High School student's reading list. Discusses the accomplisments of Newton, Daniel Bernoulli, Faraday, Clausius and Einstein through their personal lives. Most of the subjects came from dysfunctional families and/or
poverty. All are science Horatio Algers. Excellent gift for any
teenager, boy or girl.
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Summary: As the physicists turn.
Review: The author of this book should be hung up by his thumbs whilst being slowly beaten to death by irate readers. Hopefully they will bludgeon him with several large encylopaedias whilst chanting, "check the facts, check the facts."
This may and it's a large MAY be the only thing that stops the revolving in the grave of the people who's stories our supposedly contained within this book.
You know that a reader is in for a torrid time when only five, yes, five pages into the first chapter is a mistake so incredibly stupid that you have to wish that the author included it as either a joke or to try and keep his readers awake. Unfortunately neither seems to be the case. Just so you don't choke on your own bodily fluids if you make the mistake of reading this book, here it is. The king of England at the time of the civil war Dr. Guillen was Charles the first not William the first. A small difference of 600 years between them, you know 1066 and all that. If only that was the only error, or if only I had stopped reading. Several people had corrected the numerous errors in my library copy; I'm fighting the urge to add my own corrections.
This book is the literary equivalent of a car crash. You know you don't want to look at the devastation and suffering but somehow you just can't seem to stop yourself.
A lot more facts and a lot less sensationalism would have helped this book.
As it is the incredibly annoying section on heat makes you think that Fahrenheit 451 with fond memories.
If you want a book on the poetry of maths grab Mandlebrots book on fractals. Yes its a chalanging read, but worth every bit if energy you expend on it and by the end you will see some of the most beautiful maths imaginable.
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Summary: Very well-researched and well-written
Review: The author writes about five mathematical equations that have profoundly influenced the world and of the five men who came up with the equations. Reading the story about these mathematicians/physicists/scientists, it is obvious that the author did a superb job in researching the lives and efforts of these men.
At the same time, Guillen doesn't overdo it on the biographical information about these five men. He also talks about the issues surrounding the five equations and he does it in a way that laymen like me can understand.
Finally, he offers the reasoning beyond the significance of the equations. They range from "...electrifying the Industrial Age" to ushering in the dawn of the Atomic Age. A very good non-fiction.
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Summary: I was astonished at the errors.
Review: The pressure on a dam wall has nothing to do with the volume of water behind it (see chapter on Bernoulli). Carnot's principle has nothing to do with losses due to friction & finite insulation; it states that even with zero friction & infinite insulation there is still an inevitable loss when converting heat energy to mechanical energy; the specific heat of air is very low compared to water, yet this book claims just the opposite. The errors go on & on, & I'm astonished that no one seems to have spotted at least one of the ones mentioned above
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Summary: entertaining but inaccurate and sensationalized
Review: There is a clear division of opinion on this book. I side with those who find its numerous errors and its sensationalism unpleasant. Of the errors, the one on page 162 (another reviewer mistyped it as 62) is the most egregious and bears quoting: "Figuring out how to spin a magnet had been the key in designing the dynamo. At first...engineers had used an _electric motor_ to spin the dynamo's magnet; the motor itself was kept spinning by siphoning off some of the electricity produced by the dynamo." This clearly describes a perpetual motion machine. (Think: if we could build generators that power themselves, why would we ever use dams or nuclear reactors to power them?) In the chapter on thermodynamics, Guillen shows that he is aware that perpetual motion is impossible. But here he fails to recognize that, in groping to explain who-knows-what ill-digested concept, he has invented one. If he can't handle basic mechanics, how can we trust him to explain relativity? The much-lauded human-interest side of the book is even more suspect. Guillen describes the emotional and mental state of Newton, Bernoulli, et al, with the intimate confidence of a confessor. He could not possibly have known how Rudolf Clausius felt as he listened to his wife scream in her terminal agony, or whether he related her pain to the concept of entropy. He couldn't possibly know how Newton felt about the grammar school bully, and so on. The phrase "how could he know that?" occurred to me over and over as I read these episodes. In fact, he can't know it. All these gripping insights are inventions, and have no more claim on our interest than the inventions of any novelist. If Guillen had any authoritative sources he hasn't shared them. This is not just academic nit-picking; a bibliography would be a service to the reader who gets interested in, for example, the life of Faraday, and wants to read further. None is given. Finally, Guillen treats philosophy with the same kind of sensationalism that he uses on imaginary emotional lives. Here's one of several passages on the relation of science to religion (p. 55): "Earth's gravity, Newton had demonstrated, extended to the moon and beyond; indeed, there was no place in the universe that did not feel its influence... Consequently, there was no place left uncorrupted in the universe for God to dwell. He had been crowded out of our picture of the universe by gravity's infinite reach. For the first time in Western history, the heavens had been completely despoiled; God's perfect existence had been purged ignominiously from our scientific theories." Whether you are a secularist like me or a theist, this sweeping claim should make your jaw drop. The extension of gravity to infinity might blow away Plato's and Aristotle's notions of the purity of the celestial spheres, but did it perturb any more recent thinker? This kind of claim, breath-takingly broad and grossly oversimplified, lacking all nuance and without any sort of support or documentation, is common in the book. Pieces of this book are entertaining and occasionally insightful. But it has far too many flaws of the sorts described here to be worth anyone's purchase.
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Summary: Understandable & Enjoyable: Fun While Learning!
Review: This book allows the contemporary reader to glimpse the backgrounds of geniuses such as Newton, Bernoulli, Einstein, Clausius, and Faraday. Equations that we take for granted and now learn in high school were, at the times of these scientists, a leap into the great unknown. This book forces the reader to grasp the magnitude of these common men's genius and discoveries and their history-altering effects. As an engineer, the mathematical equations were very familiar to me, but it was enjoyable to learn about physical principles all over again-- only this time through the eyes of their discoverers. The only people that would give this book a bad review are either people who have absolutely no grasp on the most basic of physics or people who fancy themselves as so intelligent that they spend their entire reading time trying to find minor inconsistencies in the explanation of physical principles. This book was referred to me by a friend, and I figured I'd read it to be nice. Turns out, it was a diamond in the rough! I think this would make outstanding required reading in a high school physics class because it makes you WANT to learn more.
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