The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis - Softcover

Jago, Lucy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375708820 ISBN 13: 9780375708824

Publisher: Vintage, 2002

Synopsis

Science, biography, and arctic exploration coverage in this extraordinary true story of the life and work of Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland, the troubled genius who solved the mysteries of one of nature's most spectacular displays.
Captivated by the otherworldly lights of the aurora borealis, Birkeland embarked on a lifelong quest to discover their cause. His pursuit took him to some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, from the remote snowcapped mountains of Norway to the war-torn deserts of Africa. In the face of rebuke by the scientific establishment, sabotage by a jealous rival, and his own battles with depression and paranoia, Birkeland remained steadfast. Although ultimately vindicated, his theories were unheralded--and his hopes for the Nobel Prize scuttled--at the time of his suspicious death in 1917.
The Northern Lights offers a brilliant account of the physics behind the aurora borealis and a rare look inside the mind of one of history's most visionary scientists.

About this title

Review:

The Northern Lights is Lucy Jago's compassionate account of the lonely and ultimately tragic life of Kristian Birkeland, the pioneer of our understanding of the Aurora Borealis. The cost of scientific advancement should not be measured in purely financial terms--illumination did not come cheaply to Birkeland, who experienced poor health, heavy solitary drinking, a failed marriage, resentment from colleagues and lack of international respect. In fact, it took until nearly 50 years after his death in 1917 for his theories to be substantiated, a delay which slowed the advance of geomagnetic and auroral physics. As well a scientific biography, The Northern Lights is also the story of a small nation trying to come out from the shadow of larger ones, to be accorded respect scientifically and to gain political independence.

Birkeland led expeditions to the freezing wastes of northern Norway to prove that the phenomenon Aristotle had called "jumping goats" and Galileo had termed boreale aurora, was caused by a flow of electric particles from the sun. He also went to Africa to study the Zodiacal Light, which he believed to be similarly derived but by then his mental and physical health were deteriorating fast, paranoia convincing him that the British, whose scientific fraternity had so stubbornly disdained his work, were spying on him. Unintentionally eccentric, as a university professor he wore a red fez and red leather Egyptian slippers and his idea of courtship involved sending a female admirer a sack of potatoes or perhaps some dried flatfish. As side-projects, he was also the inventor of the world's first commercial fertiliser maker and a more sinister electro-magnetic cannon. This is splendid, alleviating stuff for a biographer and former documentary producer Lucy Jago breathes commendably thawing air into a potentially icy subject. Fastidiously researched and recounted with unbounded vigour, the obvious comparison is with Dava Sobel's Longitude but perhaps the more pertinent one is with Richard Panek's history of the telescope, Seeing and Believing, for its concise science and accessible narrative. Either way, Jago's assured debut does great credit to an obsessive inquirer who sacrificed his life, too literally, for celestial enlightenment. --David Vincent

Review:

"As gripping as a Conan Doyle adventure." -Harper's Magazine

"Fascinating... evokes the manic, punishing era of polar exploration."- The New York Times Book Review

"A fascinating nugget of history... Jago charts her course unerringly."-Chicago Tribune

"Jago deftly paints a historical background for some of the most important concepts in electromagnetic theory today, breathing life into [her] subject."-Scientific American

"Thrilling... if you like a Faustian fable, war, and weird science, then this is for you."-Conde Nast Traveler

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375708820
• ISBN 13: 9780375708824
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320