Currently reading....

... Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Description of a singularly dedicated British scientist, J. B. S. Haldane:
"On other occasion, while poisoning himself with elevated levels of oxygen, Haldane had a fit so severe that he crushed several vertebrae. Collapsed lungs were a routine hazard. Perforated eardrums were quite common, too; but, as Haldane reassuringly noted in one of his essays, 'the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.'"

Geologist referring to inhospitable environment provided by the young earth:
"'Well, one school of though says it was actually cool then because the sun was much weaker.' (I later learned that biologists, when they are feeling jocose, refer to this as 'the Chinese restaurant problem' -- because we had a dim sun.)"

Ethyl gasoline (leaded gasoline) story:
"As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyl's ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the company's commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew all too well the perils of lead poisoning; he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it."

On Sir Isaac Newton:
"Newton was a decidedly odd figure -- brilliant beyond measure, but solitary, joyless, prickly to the point of paranoia famously distracted (upon swinging his feet out of bed in the morning he would reportedly sometimes sit for hours, immobilized by the sudden rush of thoughts to his head), and capable of he most riveting strangeness. He built his own laboratory, the first at Cambridge, but then engaged in the most bizarre experiments. Once he inserted a bodkin -- a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather -- into his eye socket and rubbed it around 'betwixt my eye as near to [the] backside of my eye as I could' just to see what would happen."

I'm on page 411, and I started reading it yesterday morning. Who knew science could be so fascinating? Anytime math comes up, it still escapes me, though.