This text tells the story of the people who made science and the turbulent times they live in. As well as famous figures such as Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein, there are also the obscure, the eccentric and even the mad. This diverse cast includes, among others: Andreas Vesalius, anatomist and secret grave-robber; the flamboyant Galileo, accused of heresy for his ideas; the obsessive, competitive Newton, who wrote his rivals out of the history books; Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk who founded modern genetics; and Louis Agassiz, who was so determined to prove the existence of ice ages that he marched his colleagues up a mountain to show them the evidence.