Bill Bryson - A short history of nearly everything

“it was said to have played a part in the suicide . . .” Weinberg, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles , p. 3.

“to raise a little flax and a lot of children . . .” Weinberg, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles , p. 104.

“Had she taken a bullfighter . . .” Quoted in Cropper, p. 259.

“It was a feeling Rutherford would have understood.” Cropper, p. 317.

“tell the students to work it out for themselves.” Wilson, Rutherford , p. 174.

“as far as he could see . . .” Wilson, Rutherford , p. 208.

“He was one of the first to see . . .” Wilson, Rutherford , p. 208.

“Why use radio?” Quoted in Cropper, p. 328.

“Every day I grow in girth.” Snow, Variety of Men , p. 47.

“persuaded by a senior colleague that radio had little future.” Cropper, p. 94.

“Some physicists thought that atoms might be cube shaped . . .” Asimov, The History of Physics , p. 551.

“The number of protons . . .” Guth, p. 90.

“Add a neutron or two and you get an isotope.” Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom , p. 106.

“only one millionth of a billionth of the full volume . . .” Gribbin, Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science , p. 35.

“a fly many thousands of times heavier than the cathedral.” Cropper, p. 245.

“they could, like galaxies, pass right through each other unscathed” Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way , p. 288.

“Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience . . .” Feynman, p. 117.

“the delay in discovery was probably a very good thing . . .” Boorse et al., p. 338.

“(I do not even know what a matrix is . . . )” Cropper, p. 269.

“a matter of simply needing more precise instruments . . .” Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way , p. 288.

“at once everywhere and nowhere” David H. Freedman, from “Quantum Liaisons,” Mysteries of Life and the Universe , p. 137.

“a person who wasn’t outraged . . .” Overbye, p. 109.

“Don’t try.” Von Baeyer, p. 43.

“The cloud itself is essentially just a zone . . .” Ebbing, General Chemistry , p. 295.

“an area of the universe . . .” Trefil, 101 Things You Don’t Know About Science and No One Else Does Either , p. 62.

“things on a small scale . . .” Feynman, p. 33.

“matter could pop into existence . . .” Alan Lightman, “First Birth” in Shore, Mysteries of Life and the Universe , p. 13.

“two identical pool balls . . .” Lawrence Joseph, “Is Science Common Sense?” in Shore, Mysteries of Life and the Universe , pp. 42-43.

“Remarkably, the phenomenon was proved in 1997 . . .” Christian Science Monitor , “Spooky Action at a Distance,” October 4, 2001.

“one cannot ‘predict future events exactly . . .’ ” Hawking, A Brief History of Time , p. 61.

“Scientists have dealt with this problem . . .” David H. Freedman, from “Quantum Liaisons,” in Shore, Mysteries of Life and the Universe , p. 141.

“The weak nuclear force . . .” Ferris, The Whole Shebang , p. 297.

“The grip of the strong force reaches out . . .” Asimov, Atom , p. 258.

“he wasted the second half of his life.” Snow, The Physicists , p. 89.

“Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure . . .” McGrayne, Prometheans in the Lab , p. 88.

“These men probably went insane . . .” McGrayne, p. 92.

“In fact, Midgley knew only too well . . .” McGrayne, p. 92.

“One leak from a refrigerator at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio . . .” McGrayne, p. 97.

“One pound of CFCs can capture . . .” Biddle, p. 62.

“A single CFC molecule . . .” Science , “The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences,” October 13, 2000, p. 299.

“His death was itself memorably unusual.” Nature , September 27, 2001, p. 364.

“Up to this time, the oldest reliable dates . . .” Libby, “Radiocarbon Dating,” from Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1960.

“After eight half-lives . . .” Gribbin and Gribbin, Ice Age, p. 58.

“every raw radiocarbon date you read today . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 174.

“it is like miscounting by a dollar . . .” Flannery, The Future Eaters , p. 151.

“just around the time that people first came to the Americas . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier , pp. 174-75.

“whether syphilis originated in the New World . . .” Science , “Can Genes Solve the Syphilis Mystery?” May 11, 2001, p. 109.

“Unfortunately, he now met yet another formidable impediment . . .” Lewis, The Dating Game , p. 204.

“led him to create a sterile laboratory . . .” Powell, Mysteries of Terra Firma , p. 58.

“a figure that stands unchanged 50 years later . . .” McGrayne, p. 173.

“a doctor who had no specialized training . . .” McGrayne, p. 94.

“about 90 percent of it appeared to come from automobile exhaust pipes . . .” Nation , “The Secret History of Lead,” March 20, 2000.

“The notion became the foundation of ice core studies . . .” Powell, Mysteries of Terra Firma , p. 60.

“Ethyl executives allegedly offered to endow a chair . . .” Nation , “The Secret History of Lead,” March 20, 2000.

“Almost immediately lead levels in the blood of Americans . . .” McGrayne, p. 169.

“those of us alive today have about 625 times more lead in our blood . . .” Nation , March 20, 2000.

“The amount of lead in the atmosphere also continues to grow . . .” Green, Water, Ice and Stone , p. 258.

“forty-four years after most of Europe . . .” McGrayne, p. 191.

“Ethyl continued to contend . . .” McGrayne, p. 191.

“devouring ozone long after you have shuffled off.” Biddle, pp. 110-11.

“Worse, we are still introducing huge amounts of CFCs . . .” Biddle, p. 63.

“Two recent popular books . . .” The books are Mysteries of Terra Firma and The Dating Game , both of which make his name “Claire.”

“astounding error of thinking Patterson was a woman . . .” Nature , “The Rocky Road to Dating the Earth,” January 4, 2001, p. 20.

“In 1911, a British scientist named C. T. R. Wilson . . .” Cropper, p. 325.

“if I could remember the names of these particles . . .” Quoted in Cropper, p. 403.

“can do forty-seven thousand laps around a four-mile tunnel . . .” Discover , “Gluons,” July 2000, p. 68.

“Even the most sluggish . . .” Guth, p. 121.

“In 1998, Japanese observers reported . . .” Economist , “Heavy Stuff,” June 13, 1998, p. 82; and National Geographic , “Unveiling the Universe, October 1999, p. 36.

“Breaking up atoms . . .” Trefil, 101 Things You Don’t Know About Science and No One Else Does Either , p. 48.