Galileo's Finger

In Galileo's Finger: The 10 Great Ideas of Science Peter W Atkins devotes a chapter to each of Evolution, DNA, Energy, Entropy, Atoms, Symmetry, Quanta, Cosmology, Spacetime, and Arithmetic. The book is written so that the chapters can be read individually if desired. Each chapter takes a look at the historical development and describes of some of the important concepts of the subject. The book gives a wide view of each subject rather than reporting the latest results, but it does help the reader to get an understanding of some difficult concepts, such as String theory, General relativity and Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

I thought the chapter on Quanta didn't really come together - trying to give a simple explanation conflicted with trying to show why people have found quantum theory so mysterious. Also I felt that, at some points in the book, Atkins was tending towards a 'literary' style, which was a bit offputting. This wasn't excessive, however, and generally it is very readable, with plenty of helpful diagrams - clearly plenty of though has gone into putting this book together. No prior knowledge of the subjects is required, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of the fundamental ideas in science.