Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary Idea

Author(s): Thomas Wright

Biography

"What I am really anxious to hear is the final cause of your monstrous fiction. For your false invention seems to have no purpose. What reason can you give me for the circulation of the blood?" William Harvey's theory of circulation was as controversial in its day as Copernicus' idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Unleashing intellectual anarchy, derailing established ideas, & gaining currency far beyond the walls of the College of Physicians, Harvey's revolutionary theory went on to permeate the culture and language of 17th century England. Circulation charts the remarkable rise of the yeoman's son who demolished beliefs held by anatomists since Roman times, going on to become arguably the greatest Englishman in the history of science after Darwin & Newton.

General Information

  • : 9780099552697
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Vintage
  • : 0.273
  • : 01 March 2013
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 31 May 2013
  • : books

Other Specifications

  • : Thomas Wright
  • : Paperback
  • : 610.92
  • : 288

More About The Product

Winner of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2012, this is the vivid and visceral biography of William Harvey, the Renaissance anatomist who discovered the circulation of the blood.

Winner of Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2012.

"A book that combines scholarly science with narrative excitement to spectacular effect" -- Mark Lawson "A concise, skilful and eloquent book" -- Charles Nicholl Guardian "Thomas Wright's book opens brilliantly and bloodily and continues in the same vein...a captivating intellectually gripping journey into our country's scientific past" -- Druin Burch Mail on Sunday "In Circulation, Wright tells a good story, warts and all" -- Duncan Wu Independent "[An] acute, imaginative book" -- John Carey Sunday Times

Thomas Wright was educated at Saint Thomas More RC School, Bedford, and Magdalen College, Oxford. His groundbreaking Oscar's Books (Chatto & Windus, 2008), a portrait of his hero Oscar Wilde though his reading, was hailed by Craig Brown as 'an original and eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography'. His play, Death in Genoa, was recently produced in London and broadcast on website of The Independent. He lives in Oxford.