From skyscrapers to jet aircraft, from mobile phones to computers, the products of modern science surround us on all sides.

Perhaps the most significant product of science, however, is not the microwave, or the space station or the widescreen TV; it is the scientific method itself. Those societies that have actively embraced this method have flourished.

The men and women who appear in The Great Scientists haver all excelled in their chosen field of science; some have excelled across a range of scientific areas, while still others can, with some justification, claim to be the founders of their own disciplines.

The road into the light of reason has not always been an easy one: skepticism, mockery, threats and worse have often been the lot of the experimental scientist who has dared to challenge the accepted 'truths'. Yet they have persevered, and in doing so have provided a shining example for the rest of humanity.

The great scientists have burned, in Bertrand Russell's telling phrase, 'with all the noonday brightness of human genius'. The Great Scientists tells their story."

John Farndon