the book collector
with it consigned a Kindle e-reader to the sort of Boot Hill that’s re- served for such devices. The corpse he had mounted on a wooden shield which he displays in his shop. We know exactly what he’s driving at but the observation is worth making that many who were terrified at school by the mere sight of a printed page have discovered via the Kindle that there’s nothing to be frightened of and that ‘books are great’. The ene- my is not the Kindle but the slow strangulation of reading itself. a mayday choir sings from its tower, punts glide beneath its bridge, deer lounge in its park and in the library of Magdalen College, Oxford, lie some of the most important scientific books ever produced. The librarian, Daryl Green, has listed them under the title ‘Ten Books that Changed the World.’ They are: Physica by Aristotle (1472), the first ever printed edition. De Revolutionibus by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543), ‘one of the major game-changing texts of the scientific world.’ Printing finished on 20 April 1543 in an edition of between four and five hundred copies, one of which was sent immediately to Copernicus who was on his deathbed. De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius (1543). The Magdalen copy still survives in its 16th century binding. SystemaCosmicum by Galileo (1632). Historia Plantarum by Theophrastus (1644), ‘one of the key reference texts for any botanist or medic in the 17th century’. The Magdalen copy was bequeathed to it in 1655. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665). The engravings of the louse and the flea are the most famous of the plates. This was the book that coined the word ‘cell’ when examining dissected plants. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1665), the first journal de- voted exclusively to science. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton (1687). ‘This book set down his four laws of motion, as well as a new, rigorous philosophy of scientific reasoning that would come to dominate scien- tific enquiry and observation for the next 300 years.’ What is Life? By Erwin Schrödinger (1944), the theoretical biological framework that paved the way for the work of Watson and Crick. The Double Helix by James Watson (1968), the book that spawned the age of the ‘rock star’ scientist. On another plane, we have pleasure in pre-viewing an exhibition up- coming at Magdalen called ‘Lawrence of Oxford’. In the final months
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