Discover Magazine's 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time

I saw in today’s Mobile Press-Register where today marks the 10-year anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, and this reminded me of a great recommended reading list that I’ve never mentioned on this blog.
Before I get to the reading list, I feel that I should say a few words about the Human Genome Project. The project began in October 1990, and scientists expected to spend 15 years and $3 billion to complete a map of the human genome. Every cell in the body contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, and each chromosome is a bundle of DNA. This DNA contains the instructions for the creation of our physical traits, including our eye color, hair color, blood type, etc. The project wrapped up about five years ahead of schedule because private companies got involved and sped up the process.
As I mentioned earlier, this all got me to thinking about a recommended reading list that the editors of Discover magazine compiled and published in December 2006. The list is called Discover Magazine’s 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time. Without further ado, here they are:
1. The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches by Charles Darwin
2. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
3. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton
4. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei
5. On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (On the Shoulders of Giants) by Nicolaus Copernicus
6. Physica by Aristotle
7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius
8. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
10. One, Two, Three… Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science by George Gamow
11. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James D. Watson
12. What is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches by Erwin Schrodinger
13. Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective by Carl Sagan
14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson
15. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by Steven Weinberg
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard P. Feynman
21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred Charles Kinsey
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
23. Under a Lucky Star: A Lifetime of Adventure by Roy Chapman Andrews
24. Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Mady by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon by Robert Hooke
25. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock
The list also included eight honorable mention titles:
1. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
2. Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
3. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
4. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
5. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen W. Hawking
6. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
7. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theorgy by Brian Greene
8. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
In the end, I’d like to know how many of these books you’ve read. What did you think about them, and which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.