Welcome to The book of science. Come here each week to find poetry and commentary on another milestone of the history of science.

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New this week

In 105, during the Eastern Han dynasty, Cai Lun introduced paper and papermaking.

105

Paper The magic of paper Paper moon Commentary

Cai Lun manufacturing

New recently

70	Traditional medicine Remedies Good advice Commentary	Pedanius Dioscorides medicine
70	Windmill Wonders Free wind Commentary	Hero of Alexandria (Heron) mechanics
46 BCE	Julian calendar Intercalaries Local variations Calends, nundinae, and ides Commentary	Julius Caesar astronomy
118 BCE - 1953	Cipher Decoder ring Alice, Bob, and Eve Commentary	Polybius, Julius Caesar, Giovan Battista Bellaso, Antoine and Bonaventure Rossignol, Charles Wheatstone, Frank Miller, Felix Delastelle, Fritz Nebel, Lester S. Hill, John F. Byrne cryptography
134 BCE	Astronomy Heritage Predictive astrology Commentary	Hipparchus astronomy
206 BCE	Compass Spoons, tadpoles Methods Geomancy Commentary	Chinese, Han dynasty electromagnetism

Parts of this book

You may jump to some parts of The book of science directly by selecting menu items:

• About, more about this book
• Contents, a table of milestones in the history of science, arranged chronologically
• Elements, tables for the chemical elements
  • Periodic table of the elements
  • Index of elements by year of discovery
  • Index of elements by atomic number
• Scientists, index of scientists, by last name
• Sciences, index of sciences
• Eponymous, index of milestones named after scientists
• Keywords, index of keywords in poems and titles
• Search, where you can search the book by word or phrase

Related works

You may read subsets of The book of science as separate volumes. These generally contain only the last poem on each milestone from the full book:

• Elements of elements of science
• The booklet of science

This web site also includes other works by Tom Sharp and work by other poets.