The Northern Lights by Lucy Jago

Ellen's comments:
From childhood I remember a spectacular display of Northern Lights: blowing "curtains" of brilliant colors all across the sky. It was beautiful but also fearsome because I didn't understand what I was seeing. Turns out nobody did--except for Kristian Birkeland and his research team.

Lucy Jago tells the story of this man who made it his life's work to unlock the secrets of the Aurora Borealis. In 1899, with four assistants and led by a Lapp guide, he set out to spend the winter at Haldde Observatory, located at the northernmost reach of Norway. One associate, an aspiring surgeon, suffered such severely frostbitten fingers on the trip that he had to return immediately. His fingertips were lost, as was his dream of becoming a surgeon. This was but the beginning of the difficulties of the winter as the group observed and recorded weather conditions, magnetometer readings, and Northern Lights displays in some of the harshest climate the world has to offer.

Birkeland's work was largely overlooked because the scientists of most of the rest of the world considered "Norwegian scientist" to be pretty much an oxymoron. Birkeland, however, was an amazing man with an amazingly creative, fertile mind. It is impossible to give a true picture of his genius in a few short paragraphs. The list of his inventions is long, and many of them have been the basis for modern scientific equipment, hydroelectric power, industrial production of saltpeter for fertilizer, even space exploration and weapons of war.

Cheated of the Nobel Prize by an arrogant associate, Birkeland continued his research, and was in Egypt exploring Zodiacal Light when he was trapped by the outbreak of World War I and unable to return home. He eventually "took the long way home," via Japan, where he became ill and died. Ironically, at the time of his death he was being considered for the Nobel Prize for his work on the Aurora Borealis. It was not until the 1960s(!), however, that his explanation for the Northern Lights was accepted by the scientific community and is how we understand them today.

This is a non-fiction book that reads like a novel, and though you may not understand the principles of physics involved, you will find the life of this man engrossing.

Check status at GPL.