The Canon (2007)

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science is a book written by American science author Natalie Angier.

Overview

The Canon presents a summary of some of the different areas of science, as well as extensive descriptions of, and interviews with, contemporary scientists who work in these fields. Angier's tenet is that an understanding of the basics of major areas of science can assist with providing a means by which to understand current scientific issues, and that this process should be fun. In her Introduction, Angier writes:

Of course you should know about science, for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun, and fun is good.

Angier included quotes from the scientists she interviewed throughout her descriptions of different scientific topics in an attempt to show how scientists experience and think about their work, and why they do it.

Scientists interviewed

To obtain material for The Canon, Angier interviewed a number of scientists, professors, and other science professionals, and incorporated their stories and quotes into her work. She asked them questions such as, "What does it mean to think scientifically?" and "What should nonspecialist nonchildren know about science, and how should they know it, and what is this thing called fun?" Most of these scientists are presently active in their field of research. In addition, many of these scientists have extensive bodies of work listed in detail elsewhere. The below list links the science professionals who Angier interviewed for The Canon with additional details relating to their work:

Peter Atkins, a professor of chemistry at Oxford University

John Bahcall (now deceased), an astrophysicist at Princeton University

Neta Bahcall, an astrophysicist at Princeton University

David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and former president of Caltech

Jacqueline Barton, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology

Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University

David Bercovici, a professor of geophysics at Yale University

William Blair, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins

Gunter Blobel, a Nobel laureate and cell biologist at Rockefeller University

David Botstein, a geneticist at Princeton University

Michael E. Brown, a planetary scientist at Caltech

Susan Carey, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Harvard

Rick L. Danheiser, a chemistry professor at MIT

Frank DiSalvo, s professor of chemistry at Cornell University

Michael Duff, a theoretical physicist formerly at the University of Michigan

Tom Eisner, a professor of chemical ecology at Cornell

Andy Feinberg, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University

Alvan Feinstein (now deceased), a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine

Alex Filippenko, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley

Gerald Fink, a biologist at MIT

Scott E. Fraser, a bioengineer at Caltech

Bob Full, a materials scientist at the University of California, Berkeley

Peter Galison, a professor of history of physics at Harvard University

Brian Greene, theoretical physicist at Columbia University

Alan Guth, a physicist at MIT

Susan Hockfield, a neuroscientist and president of MIT

Kip Hodges, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University

Roald Hoffmann, a chemist and poet-playwright at Cornell University

Robert Jaffe, a physicist at MIT

Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology

Darcy Kelley, a neuroscientist at Columbia University

Mary B. Kennedy, a neurobiologist at Caltech

Andrew Knoll, a professor of natural history at Harvard's Earth and Planetary Sciences Department

Jonathan Koehler, a professor of economics at the University of Texas

Walter Lewin, a professor of physics at MIT

Susan Lindquist, a cell biologist and former director of the Whitehead Institute

Stephen Lippard, a professor of chemistry at MIT

Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan

Tom Maniatis, a biologist at Harvard University

Mario Mateo, a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan

Robert Mathieu, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin

Stephen Mayo, a biology professor at Caltech

Elliot Meyerowitz, a biologist at Caltech

Kenneth R. Miller a biology professor at Brown University

James L. Mills, chief of the pediatric epidemiology section of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Daniel Nocera, a chemist at MIT

Deborah Nolan, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley

Michael Novacek, a paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History

John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University

Sir Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford

Steven Pollock, a physics professor at the University of Colorado

Kent Redford, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society

Gene Robinson, a neuroethologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Michael Rubner, a materials scientist at MIT

Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at MIT

Maarten Schmidt, an astrophysicist

John Henry Schwarz, a theoretical physicist at Caltech

Ramamurti Shankar, a physics professor at Princeton University

Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago

Cody Maverick, a oceanographer at the University of Hawaii

Chuck Steidel, an astronomy professor at Caltech

Paul Sternberg, a developmental biologist at Caltech

David J. Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech

Scott Strobel, a biochemist at Yale University

Raman Sundrum, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins

David Wake, a biologist at the University of California's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Bess Ward, a geosciences professor at Princeton University

Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate and physics professor at the University of Texas

Tim D. White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley

Michael Wigler, a biomedical researcher at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory