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"Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking" by William H. Cropper (Oxford University Press, 2001).
My summary: This is a lively history of modern physics, as seen through the lives of thirty men and women from the pantheon of physics. William H. Cropper vividly portrays the life and accomplishments of such giants as Galileo and Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, right up to contemporary figures such as Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, and Stephen Hawking. The book includes some mathematics and scientific details which one can skim or skip over.
To view or download the pdf (510 pages), click here or click here. Downloading may take some time (7.1 MB file). When viewing, you can select individual physicists by going to the Table of Contents and clicking on the page number.
"The Great Physicists From Galileo to Einstein" by George Gamow (Dover)
"Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought" – Kepler to Einstein by Gerald Holton
Galileo Galilei
"Galileo At Work" – His Scientific Biography by Stillman Drake (Dover)
"Galileo Galilei" – Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (The Modern Library)
Stephen Jay Gould, Series Editor
Translated and with revised notes by Stillman Drake
Foreword by Albert Einstein
Introduction by J. L. Heilbron
"Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo"
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake
"dialogues concerning Two New Sciences" – Galileo Galilei (Dover)
Translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvo
with an Introduction by Antonio Favaro
"Gallieo's Daughter" – A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel (Penguin Books)
"The Crime of Galileo" by Giorgio de Santillana (The University of Chicago Press)
"Galileo and the Scientific Revolution" by Laura Fermi and Gilberto Bernardini
"The Sleepwalkers" by Arthur Koestler
The classic account of the great astronomers – from the early Greeks through Copernicus and Galileo – and of the discoveries that changed man;s vision of the universe.
Isaac Newton
"Isaac Newton" by James Gleick
"The Life of Isaac Newton" by Richard Westfall
"Newton" Selected and Edited by J. Bernard Cohen and Richard S. WestFall (A Norton Critical Edition)
"Newton's Philosophy of Nature" Selections from His Writings (Dover)
"Newtonian Studies" by Alexandre Koyré
James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday
"The Man Who Changed Everything" – The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon
"Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" – How Two Men Revolutionized Physics by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon
"The Maxwellians" by Bruce J. Hunt
"The Electric Life of Michael Faraday" by Alan Hirshfeld
Albert Einstein
"Subtle is the Lord ... " – The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais
"Einstein" – His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
"Creator and Rebel – Albert Einstein" by Banesh Hoffmann with the collaboration of Helen Dukas
"Einstein's Legacy" – The Unity of Space and Time by Julian Schwinger (Dover)
Niels Bohr
"Niels Bohr's Times, In Physics, Philosophy, And Polity" by Abraham Pais
"Niels Bohr" – The Man, His Science, and the World They Changed by Ruth Moore
"Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn
The Quantum Era
"Faust in Copenhagen" – A Struggle for the Soul of Physics by Gino Segrè
"Uncertainty" – Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley
"Thirty Years That Shook Physics" – The Story of Quantum Theory by George Gamow (Dover)
Updated Sept. 18, 2026
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