Joy Hakim, The Story of Science: Aristotle leads the way, Smithsonian books, Washington, 2004

Joy Hakim, The Story of Science: Newton at the center, Smithsonian Books, Washington and New York, 2005

Joy Hakim, The Story of Science: Einstein adds a new dimension, Smithsonian Books, Washington and New York, 2007. This volume was published in association with the American National Science Teachers Association. Joy Hakim has written these books to appeal to young thinkers. Her chapters, with illustrations and amusing asides, focus on the language and idioms of young Americans.

Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. New York,2007 The book is written for young people with a narrative style that is engaging.

Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Picador, London, 2001. He dedicated this memoir to Roald  - Roald Hoffmann

Roald Hoffmann and Vivien Torrence, Chemistry Imagined: Reflections on Science, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1993.  He tells stories about aspects of chemistry, brings in the history behind developments, writes so clearly. For example, his essay, ‘Air of Revolution’ is the story of the discovery of oxygen.

Roald Hoffmann, The Same and not the Same, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995. His capacity to make connections across disciplines seems effortless. For example, in ‘Why we prefer the natural’, this Nobel prize winning chemist takes us to the vocal score of a duet in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. The folowing section of this book – ‘Value, Harm and Democracy – is worth consideration across disciplines. There were television programs on PBS based on his work in these books.

Alan Lightman, astro-physicist, essayist and novelist, Dance for Two: Essays, Pantheon Books, New York, 1996

Alan Lightman, A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit, Pantheon Books, New York, 2005

Lewis Thomas Awards – Rockefeller University – established 1993, acknowledges international scientists whose writing is of such literary quality that it crosses ‘the divide’ and enters the realm of literature. Lewis Thomas was the first recipient in 1993. Recipients since then include Jared Diamond, Oliver Sacks, Freeman Dyson and Abraham Pais and now Natalie Angier who is also a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Lewis Thomas The Lives of a Cell, Penguin Books, New York, 1978

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher Allen Lane, London, 1980

Lewis Thomas, Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word Watcher, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, London, 1990

Lewis Thomas, The Fragile Species, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1992

‘Science and the Health of the Earth’ was on his mind then, among other concerns.

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin American Prometheus: The Triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Atlantic Books, London, this paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2009. First published in USA by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc, New York. When J. Robert Oppenheimer was Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, he ‘continually emphasized that science needed the humanities to better understand its own character and its consequences.’ [p 377]

Each year an editor is chosen to collect essays by scientists for The Best American Science Writing’ published by Harper Collins. In 2004, for example, the editor was Dava Sobels, author of The Planets and Galileo’s Daughter. One of the contributors chosen that year was Diane Ackerman, poet and scientist. Her short essay ‘We Are All a Part of Nature’ concludes that year’s collection.

The differing relationship between poets and science is developed in a major essay by Peter Middleton, 'Poets and Scientists' in A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Stephen Fredman, Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA 2005. Peter Middleton's essay shows how poets including William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Ron Silliman, Myung Mi Kim and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge have reacted to modern technology and the new sciences of physics, brought about by Einstein and Max Planck, and genetics, brought into the picture so long after Mendel first did the groundwork in this field.

An American poet considering artificial intelligence is Adrienne Rich. At the University of the Third Age a member of the group posed the question - how would a supporter of the movement towards artificial intelligence answer her.