Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking

I found of going through the life of great physicists and this is the best among its type. If you want more then go for individual.

Great book exceptional.

Excellent, well researched, and compelling book.Gives insight into lives of the people who helped shape physics starting with Galileo and ending with Hawking with all the other great characters in between; Newton, Joule, Gibbs, Maxwell, Planck, Schroedinger, Dirac, Currie, Hubble, Einstein, Feynman etc. The book is split into different sections corresponding to areas of physics which were being developed during different times e.g. Mechanics, thermodynamics, E & M. The best part of this book was that Cropper provides the mathematics behind the ideas that were involved in the subjects. It not only helps gain a better understanding of the physics but gives us an idea of how these people thought and the fundamental questions that they were trying to answer. Apart from their contributions to science, a brief history is written about their lives and how they were as people. Cropper doesn't hold back on their personalities and even writes that while these men and women were luminaries of their time, science is a human endeavor. Overall a wonderful book!

If you want nice short chapters covering a number of phyisicists, this is the book for you. Unlike some it does include some maths etc to explain the basic aspects, but it also includes relationships etc.

Excelente reseña de varios de los mas importantes físicos de la historia, tanto desde lo rigurosamente científico como desde el estilo literario. Muy buen material para el dictado de materias de historia de la fisica a nivel universitario.