New Scientist A

How Jerry Wiesner, presidential science adviser and president of MIT, worked to make a better and safer world, as told by friends and colleagues and in his own autobiographical writings.

"Jerry Wiesner is well worth getting to know." – Roy Herbert, New Scientist

"…[This] collection documents Wiesner's remarkable career…many of the book's essays are fascinating."
— Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Physics Today

This is the newest title in the brilliant and bestselling "New Scientist" series. Science tells us grand things about the universe: how fast light travels, and why stones fall to earth. But scientific endeavor goes far beyond these obvious foundations. There are some fields we don't often hear about because they are so specialized, or turn out to be dead ends. Yet researchers have given hallucinogenic drugs to blind people (seriously), tried to weigh the soul as it departs the body and planned to blast a new Panama Canal with atomic weapons.