The cause of mosquitoes' sorrow

By John Dexter2008-09-01T00:00:00

John Dexter reviews this accessible text

The cause of mosquitoes' sorrow: beginnings, blunders and breakthroughs in science

Surendra Verma

Cambridge: Icon Books 2007 | Pp209 | £7.99 | ISBN 978 1 84 046831 1

Reviewed by John Dextera

This book joins several recent publications with the aim to make science accessible and interesting to the general reader, something we probably should applaud. The author has tried to summarise or highlight scientific discovery and the work of scientists in a simple format, one page per 250-word 'story'.

Presented in chronological order, each story describes a person or a discovery in a brief, often anecdotal, manner. Beginning with pi in Egypt in ca 1700 BC, we are led through to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in France 2007. (The mosquitoes of the title appear almost half way through the book in 1897.)

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