The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, by Freeman J. Dyson
An English theoretical physicist, Freeman Dyson came to America after World War II and held a coveted position at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. Now retired, Dyson has one of the most interesting minds of our time, concerned with topics ranging far beyond relativistic quantum field theory, the discipline that made him famous among physicists. In this book, the result of a series of lectures presented at the New York Public Library in 1997, Dyson's stories about science are accompanied by interesting digressions into history and politics.