Einstein's Luck

The great biologist Louis Pasteur suppressed "awkward" data because it didn't support the case he was making. Joseph Lister's famously clean hospital wards were actually notoriously dirty. And Einstein's theory of general relativity was only "confirmed" in 1919 because an eminent British scientist massaged his figures. Drawing on the latest scholarship, John Waller shows that many of our greatest heroes of science were less than honest about their experimental data, and not above using friends in high places to help get their ideas accepted. He reveals how sheer effrontery and self-promotion propelled certain scientists to the fore, obscuring the vital contributions of others and the intrinsic merit of the ideas they overturned. Einstein's Luck is an enthralling and entertaining book, which resurrects the complex personalities, bitter rivalries, and intense human dramas that enliven and illuminate the history of science. Book jacket.