Hans Christian Ørsted: Reading Nature's Mind (Hardback)

In this powerhouse of a biography-cum-science-history, historian Dan Charly Christensen reveals Ørsted as a brilliant, multifaceted figure - scientist, post-Kantian philosopher, educator and physical aesthetician. - Nature

Best known for his epoch-making discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, the versatile Danish physicist H. C. Ørsted was also a cultural icon and an eminent representative of the Kantian-Romantic movement in the early nineteenth century. Only with Christensens impressively rich and detailed biography are readers presented with a full picture of Ørsted and his time, in which his scientific work is placed in its proper social and cultural context. Combining meticulous scholarship with readability, Christensens book is a magnificent contribution to the history of science and culture that for decades will remain the authoritative biography of Ørsted. - Helge Kragh, Aarhus University

Reading Nature's Mind is a well-written and beautifully illustrated book. It is extraordinarily detailed and leaves the reader with a through understanding not only of Ørsted, but also of his contemporaries. - Nanna Katrine Luders Kaalund, Journal of BJHS

Few people know more about Hans Christian Ørsted than his "accidental" discovery of electromagnetism in 1820. Dan Ch. Christensen's definitive biography of Ørsted, now available in English, will change this. Christensen documents the intellectual and philosophical preparations that led to Ørsted's 1820 discovery and his response to the acclaim that followed. While this book is a "must read" for historians of science, its vivid descriptions of intellectual life in the early 1800s will be equally fascinating to lay readers. Read it and enjoy it! - Andrew D. Jackson, Professor of Theoretical Physics, The Niels Bohr Institute