This superb collection by the eminent physicist and critic John Ziman,
opens with an album of portraits of scientists--Albert Einstein, Freeman
Dyson, Lev Landau, Mark Azbel, Andrei Sakharov. Ziman takes readers into
the world of the contemporary scientist, showing how discoveries are
made and how claims are tested. He then travels into the minds of
scientists as they are drawn into competing directions. Here Ziman
exposes the path of discovery, which is strewn with complex human needs,
governmental restrictions, the desire for profits, and the exercise of
technical virtuosity.