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LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION War-torn, unstable and virtually bankrupt, revolutionary Russia tried to light its way to the future with the fitful glow of science. It succeeded through terror, folly and crime - but also through courage, imagination and even genius. Stalin believed that science should serve the state and with many disciplines having virtually unlimited funds, by the time of his death in 1953, the Soviet Union boasted the largest and best-funded scientific establishment in history - at once the glory and the laughing stock of the intellectual world. The human cost of this peculiar marriage between the state and its scientists was horrendous, yet, in Stalin and the Scientists , Simon Ings makes clear what Soviet science has done for us.
About the author
Simon Ings began his career writing science fiction stories, novels and films, before widening his brief to explore perception (
The Eye), 20th-century radical politics (
The Weight of Numbers), the shipping system (
Dead Water) and augmented reality (
Wolves). He co-founded and edited
Arc magazine, a digital publication about the future, before joining
New Scientist as its arts editor. Out of the office, he lives in possibly the coldest flat in London, writing for the
Guardian,
Times,
Telegraph,
Independent and
Nature.
Summary
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION War-torn, unstable and virtually bankrupt, revolutionary Russia tried to light its way to the future with the fitful glow of science.
