Harvard professor Lisa Randall—renowned for her research on particle physics and cosmology—jolted the physics world with the 1999 Randall-Sundrum model, a fascinating and complex extra-dimensional theory of the universe. The first tenured woman in the Princeton physics department and the first tenured female theoretical physicist at MIT and Harvard, she was named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” In addition to her acclaimed 2005 book Warped Passages, she also wrote the libretto for Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes that premiered at Paris’s prestigious Centre Pompidou. With Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Randall illustrates the aims of the Large Hadron Collider, and examines the role of risk, creativity, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking.

Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1967, Gino Segre’s writing illuminates the history of science and the scientists whose discoveries propelled the field forward. Critically acclaimed and compelling, Segre’s Faust in Copenhagen describes the 1932 Copenhagen gathering of physicists at a moment of great transition, when a rapid succession of discoveries marked the beginning of nuclear physics. The New York Times described A Matter of Degrees, Segre’s book about temperature, as “both refreshing and rewarding… a pleasurable introduction to many key scientific ideas.” In Ordinary Geniuses, Segre tells of two scientists and friends whose maverick approach to research profoundly influenced modern science.