This book is part of a book series called Famous Lives .

There are 48 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 1992 by Usborne Publishing Ltd .

Straun Reid is a graduate in archaeology, and worked for five years on historical sites in the Middle East. He returns to give lectures on the castles of the saracens and the crusaders. Patricia Fara is a Fellow of Clare College at the University of Cambridge and works in the university's History and Philosophy of Science Department. An acclaimed author of adult popular science, she also wrote the first ever book on computers for children.

This book has the following chapters: Early scientific ideas; science in Ancient Greece; medicine in the ancient world; Islamic science; science in Mediaeval Europe; the Earth and the sun; understanding the human body; science during the Renaissance; scientific societies; the rise of experiment; classifying the natural world; the age of the Earth; evolution; the growth of modern chemistry; studying electricity; the fight against disease; waves and radiation; the science of life; opening up the atom; the origin of the universe; women in science; key dates in scientific discovery.