Simon Singh's "The Big Bang" (Book)

[Sreepathi Pai]

I just finished reading it and I highly recommend it.

It maps the growth of cosmology from ancient times to the first
serious attempt by Einstein to understand how the universe came into
being using relativity.

The book is a wonderful trip through many discoveries and documents
the many ways a theory is developed with good descriptions of all the
stumbling blocks, mistakes, opposition from the establishment, etc.
Things discussed:

1) Discovery of the Cepheid variables that enabled cosmic distances to
be calculated

2) Hubble's discovery of an expanding universe

3) Rutherford's experiments on atomic structure

4) The Alpha-Beta-Gamma paper on formation of hydrogen and helium
(Alpher, Bethe, Gamov)

5) Hoyle's theory of stellar nucleosynthesis (as also his Steady State
Theory) for the higher elements

6) The discovery of Quasars that caused so many issues for steady-state theory

7) The exposition of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and
the COBE experiment

Plus, spectroscopy, red shift, relativity, etc.

In all, the book packs a lot of information in a manner highly
accessible to an educated reader and is quite a page turner!

--
Sreepathi Pai