Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe (58 page)

Wenzel, William,
173

Weyl, Hermann,
230

Whaling, Ward,
173
,
174

Wheeler, John Archibald,
229

White, T. H.,
241

Wickramasinghe, Chandra,
214

Wilberforce, Samuel,
81
,
281
n

Wilde, Oscar,
6

Wilkins, Maurice,
120
,
121
–25,
137
–37,
139
,
141
,
144
,
147
,
148
,
150
,
152
,
154
,
287
n
,
288
n
,
290
n

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP),
254

Williams, Robley,
132

Wilson, Edmund Beecher,
117

Wilson, Herbert,
150
,
154

Wilson, Robert,
210

Wilson, William E.,
92

Wilson, Woodrow,
9

Witkowski, Jan,
124

Woods, M.,
179

World War I,
158

World War II,
7
,
128
,
130
,
159
,
169
,
182
,
203
,
233
,
235
,
259

Wright, Sewall,
58

X-ray crystallography,
105
–15,
120
–29,
126
,
132
,
133
,
138
–40,
150
–52,
285
n

Ylem,
167
,
175
–76

Zeldovich, Yakov,
251

Zero-point energy,
250
,
251
,
255

Ziegler, Anna,
151

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright © 2013 by Mario Livio

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2013

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Credits for figures and quotations are listed on pp. 325–26.

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Text designed by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Oliver Munday

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Livio, Mario.

Brilliant blunders : from Darwin to Einstein—colossal mistakes by great scientists that changed our understanding of life and the universe / Mario Livio. — First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

p. cm.

Summary: “Drawing on the lives of five great scientists—Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle and Albert Einstein—scientist/author Mario Livio shows how even the greatest scientists made major mistakes and how science built on these errors to achieve breakthroughs, especially into the evolution of life and the universe.” — Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Errors, Scientific. I. Title.

Q172.5.E77L58 2013

500—dc23  2012037732

ISBN 978-1-4391-9236-8

ISBN 978-1-4391-9238-2 (ebook)