The New York Times Book Review - Carl Zimmer
For many people…being a great scientist means being above error. That's why it is so common to see a magazine cover headline declaring, in screaming type, Einstein was wrong, or its weasel-word variant, was Einstein wrong? Livio's book is a valuable antidote to this skewed picture. He profiles five great scientists…each of whom made major discoveries and major mistakes. All five put their chips down on the wrong number, even as others prevailed. Thanks to his deep curiosity, Livio turns Brilliant Blunders into a thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself.
The Washington Post - Marcia Bartusiak
Thoughtful, well-researched and beautifully written, Brilliant Blunders offers a distinctive—and far more truthful—perspective on the journey to scientific discovery. Livio chooses carefully. He focuses on the colossal mistakes of "genuinely towering scientists," including Charles Darwin, physicist Lord Kelvin, chemist Linus Pauling and cosmologist Fred Hoyle. And by providing enough background on each man's achievements, placing every blooper in a broad context, the author takes the reader on a splendid tour of some key ideas on evolution, geology, physics and cosmology.
Publishers Weekly
Astrophysicist and award-winning author Livio (The Golden Ratio) analyzes ruinous errors of five great scientific minds in the wake of their most prominent discoveries and how those errors have not only propelled scientific breakthroughs, but provide "insights...into the operation of the human mind." Summoning Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein, Livio argues there is no progress without lessons in humility. These thinkers succumbed to moments of fear, pride, stubbornness, and doubt common to all "mere mortals"—to the benefit of elucidating the evolution of life and the universe. Two-time Nobel prize-winning chemist Pauling's flub of basic chemistry catalyzed the discoveries of Watson and Crick; Hoyle, a cosmologist who displayed "pigheaded, almost infuriating refusal" to give up his thoroughly refuted "steady state theory", energized advanced studies of how we exist in space with his controversial ideas; and Einstein, "the embodiment of genius", refused to give up on his cosmological constant, "the most famous fudge factor in the history of science." With humor and precision, Livio reminds us: "Even the most impressive minds are not flawless; they merely pave the way for the next level of understanding." (May)
The New York Review of Books - Freeman Dyson
After reading Livio's account, I look on the history of science in a new way. In every century and every science, I see brilliant blunders.
New York Journal of Books - Robert Schaefer
"Wide ranging and entertaining, Brilliant Blunders might be picked up by readers who have been fooled into doing so by the notion of blunders, but they will certainly enjoy it for its brilliance."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
In Brilliant Blunders, Mario Livio leaves no historical detail untold, as we re-walk the error-filled pathways along which human understanding of the universe slowly emerged.
Steven Strogatz
Mario Livio wears many hats: scientist, sleuth, storyteller. In Brilliant Blunders, a delightful intellectual synthesis, he reminds us that he’s also one of the best science writers in our galaxy.
Lawrence M. Krauss
One of the most important things that distinguishes science from religion is that in science we (eventually) are happy to change our minds. This is called learning. As Mario Livio eloquently describes in this far-reaching and thoroughly enlightening book, many famous scientific advances involved either false starts or dead ends. In my own field, Einstein is purported to have said that inserting the cosmological constant into his equations of General Relativity was his ‘biggest blunder.’ In hindsight, as we find ourselves living in a Universe whose future may be determined by this quantity, most of us would now pay our eye teeth to have made such blunder!
Plus magazine - Marianne Freiberger
"Livio's usual knack at making sophisticated concepts accessible has been brought to bear on his book. . . . What comes through clearly, as is one of the author's stated intentions, is that errors are part and parcel of the process and that science progresses, not always despite them, but also through them. . . . With its illustrious characters, interesting ideas and those blunders to marvel at, the book makes a fascinating read."
Physics World - Len Fisher
The stories of how these blunders came about, and what happened next, are extremely well researched, and they shed a welcome, informative, entertaining and sometimes new light on science as a deeply human activity.
Adam Riess
It is said that genius is the ability to make all possible mistakes in the least amount of time. Livio’s genius is to show us just how much those mistakes have taught us.
Martin Rees
Mario Livio sets the discoveries of five great scientists who were also remarkable personalities in their social context, showing how they emerged from confusion and controversy. His archival research allows him to debunk several myths that have been given currency through less thorough biographies. You don’t need to be a scientist to be fascinated by this scholarly, insightful and beautifully written book.
Scientific American - Anna Kuchment
"Astrophysicist Livio unmasks the flaws in the work of some of our greatest scientific minds in this meditation on the winding, unpredictable path of discovery."
The Wall Street Journal - Samuel Arbesman
Mr. Livio is a gifted storyteller. . . .[He] shows how science works partly by feeding on past mistakes: Once recognized, the errors sparked creativity in other scientists. An incorrect view of the world is not simply a mistake; it's a catalyst that leads to better understanding."
ScienceNews - Allison Bohac
"Countless scientists have made major mistakes over the centuries, but Livio wisely focuses on gaffes from just five great minds: Pauling, Darwin, Einstein, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin. . . . Though Livio can only speculate on the reasons behind these errors, his clear and compelling writing reinforces the important contributions each of these men made to their fields. . . . Livio’s ultimate message is that blunders — even big ones — can play a role in scientific discovery."
Minneapolis Star-Tribune - Curt Schleier
"You don’t have to be a science scholar to appreciate this book. . . . Brilliant Blunders shows that while scientists make mistakes, they ultimately get things right. And we’d better start paying attention."
The Miami Herald - Ariel Gonzalez
The blunders committed by the five geniuses profiled in this book should make us lesser beings feel better about ourselves. Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who writes popular science with Asimovian accessibility, doesn’t want to bring these men down. . . . Knowledge, Livio reminds us, transcends any one individual. It is relentless; in time it overcomes all obstacles, including the shortcomings of the very people dedicated to its advancement."
Dan Brown
"[Mario Livio is ] one of my favorite authors."
Physics Today - Donald Simanek
"At last we have a book specifically devoted to scientific mistakes. . . . For someone who wants the whole story, Livio's book is a page turner."
Dr. Francis Collins
Taking risks is part of genius, and genius is not immune to bloopers. Mario Livio's Brilliant Blunders leads us through the circumstances that surrounded famous gaffes. . . . Mr. Livio helps us see that such spectacular errors are opportunities rather than setbacks.
The Lancet - Andrew Robinson
"Elegant, entertaining, and instructive."
Library Journal
Astrophysicist, prolific writer, and blogger Livio (Space Telescope Science Inst.; The Golden Ratio) succeeds in his aim to demonstrate that science progresses by fits and starts, with oversights, or conceptual errors (aka blunders), as part of the process. Livio sees blunders as very dependent upon a scientist’s milieu—the theories, prejudices, and culture within which the scientist exists. He examines the world-changing key works of Charles Darwin, physicist Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein via detailed descriptions of the contexts within which their oversights occurred. His placement of these scientists’ work within their historical context makes the technical details of their research more accessible to lay readers and is a narrative approach reminiscent of George Pendle’s Strange Angel, his study of rocketeer Jack Parsons. Livio aims to link the men’s work under the notion of environment and evolution, defined so broadly that they seem useless and unnecessary threads, the only notable shortcoming of this engaging work.
Verdict An entertaining and different take on the work of pivotal Western scientists. Recommended.—Sara R. Tompson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lib., Pasadena, CA
(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
JULY 2013 - AudioFile
Books on science may be the most difficult to convey on audio. The material can be dense, the vocabulary specialized, and some degree of background is often required. Those difficulties are mostly overcome in Mario Livio’s lively and accessible history of how being wrong advanced scientific knowledge. Jeff Cummings does a serviceable job of making this narrative a pleasure as well as an education. But his decision to mimic the voices of the great scientists was an error for which everyone involved showed bad judgment and a faulty ear. One can’t argue with his rendering of Erasmus Darwin— or of Charles Darwin, for that matter. But his Albert Einstein is off the mark—and a distraction. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Astrophysicist and popular science writer Livio (Is God a Mathematician?, 2009, etc.) delivers entertaining accounts of how five celebrated scientists went wrong. Darwin proposed that if one individual has a heritable advantage, such as strength, speed or brains, more of its offspring will survive, so the species will acquire this advantage and evolve. This would be impossible if, as almost everyone believed in Darwin's day, inherited traits blended, so that a black cat and a white cat produced a gray kitten. Luckily, Mendelian genetics revealed that traits reside in distinct genes that are transmitted intact. The famous 19th-century physicist Lord Kelvin calculated erroneously that the Earth was about 100 million years old, too young for evolution to occur. Linus Pauling published an incorrect structure of DNA in 1953, the year before James Watson and Francis Crick got it right. For Livio, this was perhaps the most inexcusable of blunders: a mixture of poor-quality data, haste and egotism. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle stuck stubbornly to his 1940s steady-state theory of the universe even as evidence favoring the Big Bang accumulated, ultimately passing the last half of his life as a widely respected crank. Einstein's 1917 theory of general relativity described an expanding universe. Since everyone considered the universe static, he added a "cosmological constant" to his equations to achieve this, discarding it when astronomers discovered expansion a decade later. Historians quote Einstein calling this his "greatest blunder," but Livio doubts that he said it. Most of these stories are familiar, but the author's emphasis on major errors by distinguished scientists, including their reasons and consequences, provides a thoroughly satisfactory experience even for educated readers. An absorbing, persuasive reminder that science is not a direct march to the truth.
