The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 31 aug 2000

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) was a Swiss professor who conceived of the Ice Age and then spent decades trying to persuade other scientists he had not gone mad. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was the century's most influential geologist and a master politician among his fellow scientist. His scientific principles said an Ice Age was impossible, even after his eyes showed him it was real. Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), an adventurer trapped for two winters at the top of Greenland, wrote a poetic description of a harsh and frozen landscape. His words portrayed the previously unimaginable great ice and set the stage for the story's unexpected outcome.

The discovery of the Ice Age is one of science's greatest and least-known stories. The Ice Finders shows that, for all their boasting about reason scientist are driven by their passions and obsessions -- human traits that actually advance the evolution of scientific discovery.

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