A biography of Joseph Needham. One of the ancients said a full life, like a full day, is long enough. When Needham died in his early 90's, two days after he came to work his usual full day in the library, he went to a long-deserved rest. He was the author (and is some cases co-author or organizer) of the 20-plus volumes of Science and Civilization in China, a work of such magnitude that it has been compared to the OED. The work, published between 1954 and 2008 is still in print, and it has has b...

Noel Joseph Terrence Montgomery Needham was described as a polymath and a polyglot, a world-class scientist with considerable depth in biochemistry and the author of a classic 3 volume work, Chemical Embryology, but he also balanced his intellectual pursuits with a well-developed interest in nudism, Morris Dancing & seducing young women, while retaining friendships with the likes of Sir Julian Huxley, Zhou Enlai & Mao Zedong. Beyond all of that, Needham was a chain-smoker, a WWII diplomat, a lif...

Simon Winchester never fails to entice the reader, and here in the audiobook version he marvelously reads his own book. He teaches effortlessly. He infuses humor into his lines. He writes about characters and places and times that are interesting. His books focus not only on the details but also encompass the larger picture; you are delivered not only one man's life but also world events. In this book we follow Joseph Needham from childhood to death. He lived from 1900-1995. He was a bio-chemist...

A chatty, repetitive, but easily readable map of the life of Joseph Needham, a diligent weaving of what must have been many hundreds of notes into an often cinematic narrative with countless curious digressions along the way.As with perhaps any biography though, I am left with questions, large and small. I’ll list four I cannot escape. Before that however, I feel compelled to note the occasional and surprising instances of Winchester verging on unpleasant condescension toward the Chinese them

Also known as "The Man Who Loved China" in American editions (because our versions are necessarily dumbed-down), this is the story of Joseph Needham's quest to understand an Eastern culture to which he was introduced in adulthood. A professor of chemistry and one with no official qualifications to undertake a work of rigorous history, he embarked on one of the most ambitious, lengthy, and meticulously researched pieces of scholarship in human history. At twenty-eight volumes and still in print,

My major problem with this book was that the author never gave me any reason to care who Joseph Needham was. The book is entirely about Needham's life - there's not really anything about the work that's purportedly the reason for the book (his histories of China). It was all justabout the life of this guy who doesn't seem very likeable - he was a big-time communist and supporter of the rise of Mao, as well as a personal friend of Zhou Enlai. Even though he did have some interesting adventures, W...

He decided initially to make a great historical list, a list of every mechanical invention and abstract idea—the building blocks of modern world civilization—that had been first conceived and made in China. If he could managed to establish a flawless catalog of just what the Chinese had created first, of exactly which of the world’s ideas and concepts had actually originated in the Middle Kingdom, he would be on to something. If he could delve behind the unforgettable remark that emperor Qia

Great background reading for anyone contemplating the epic task of taking on the fifteen (and more) volumes of Science and Civilisation in China -- one the greatest compendiums of knowledge, a supreme feat of imagination and will power, and one of the most lasting bridges built between the east and the west.Winchester provides the historic and political backdrop for the composition and allows us to understand why it was such an important work — why it was so necessary and so brave an undertaking...

Yet another fascinating book and story by a master. There is one thing you can say about Simon Winchester, he does like a good polymath and that love of learning and the learned shines through every page.In a world where the next Vice President of the USA (or President if the Bible’s allotted three score and ten are anything to go by) could be someone who could more accurately be described as a polymoron – someone dangerously ignorant of just about everything except, obviously, how to skin a moo...

"No knowledge is ever to be wasted or despised." (Dr Needham, snr)Every hobby has an intellectual angle, and Needham (jr) was obsessively interested in everything.An exhilarating change from my usual fare (though it fits with my fondness for China and Cambridge): a biography of Joseph Needham (1900-1995), an eccentric but brilliant multilingual Cambridge biochemist who fell in love with a Chinese woman, then her language and her country, becoming the world expert in and ambassador for the histor...

I cannot recall when I last felt as passionate about a book as I do with this spellbinding work by Simon Winchester. I am also passionate about the amazing life of Joseph Needham, an Englishman who was born at the end of the Victorian era in 1900, who rose to such splendid heights in academia, fell from grace due to his views on the American armed forces using biological weapons during the Korean War and was finally vindicated, leading to his works on China.So purely as a taster and the rest is

Joseph NeedhamA man with a beautiful mind, one seemingly forged for the hard sciences - he worked in a college laboratory at Cambridge University specializing in embryology and morphogenesis - betrayed itself with that willful miscreant known as love, and in this case it was a love for China. Needham threw himself into the study of Chinese history and some thought at the time that he'd thrown away all he had to offer the world. But he provided them wrong, proved there was more in him than they'd...

When I was a student at the University of Oslo studying Chinese, Joseph Needham used to come up to our department. As one of the few students with a car, it was my job to pick him up at the airport, ferry him about town, and generally take care of him. I was with him at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo while he studied the construction of the Viking ships, remarking at some of the similarities with ancient Chinese shipbuilding (a subject mentioned in the book). When he left one of his ever-present...

This book got me from the very start with his constant question of Why no developement. I was very impressed by the comment of former Secretary of State Haye (Haye?) about 1920 to the effect that one could tell what policy to adopt for the next five hundred years by watching China, despite the at that time apparent lack of effect China had on the world. What I love about the book overall is Needham's single-minded devotion to learning in detail about the language, although there is more than one...

Slightly rickety account of the remarkable 20th century life of Joseph Needham, Cambridge Master and author of the mega-sized multi-volume Science & Civilisation In China. In a wildly stormy life that veered from being a founding father of UNESCO to meetings with Mao & Zhou EnLai before there was a Peoples Republic, Mr Needham saw quite a lot. Needham was in a pivotal position during the many phases of the origin of Modern China as a British Foreign Office scientific representative, arriving in

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I do not often hand out a “5” (one was for Winchester’s “The Professor and the Madman”) and will decide on the start count after I finish this review. It is worth no less than a “4.5” if such a ranking existed.After reading “The Professor and the Madman” I could not imagine the author topping or equaling that book. While it may not be everyone’s opinion I thought that that story was so well researched, written, and presented (even the afterwards bits) that anythin...