Timeless Science

Scientific books that have remained essential reading long after the research that spawned them. Ideas robust enough to survive paradigm shifts.

108 books · sorted by Lindy score
1

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins

15k

2

Foundation

Isaac Asimov

13k

3

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter

10k

4

Superintelligence

Nick Bostrom

8.6k

5

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Richard P. Feynman

8.1k

6

The Gene

Siddhartha Mukherjee

7.1k

7

Flatland

Edwin A. Abbott

6.5k

8

The Three-Body Problem

Liu Cixin

6.3k

9

The Beginning of Infinity

David Deutsch

6.3k

10

One Two Three . . . Infinity

George Gamow

5.7k

11

The Moral Animal

Robert Wright

5.7k

12

Blueprint

Nicholas A. Christakis

5.7k

13

Molecular Biology of the Cell

Bruce Alberts et al.

4.9k

14

How to Change Your Mind

Michael Pollan

4.5k

15

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

4.4k

16

Genome

Matt Ridley

4.2k

17

Statistical Models

David Freedman

4.2k

18

The Order of Time

Carlo Rovelli

4.2k

19

The Gay Science

Friedrich Nietzsche

4.2k

20

Human Compatible

Stuart Russell

4.2k

21

Deep Learning

Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville

4.0k

22

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert

3.9k

23

The Checklist Manifesto

Atul Gawande

3.7k

24

Profiles of the Future

Arthur C. Clarke

3.6k

25

Of Wolves and Men

Barry Holstun Lopez

3.4k

26

Cosmos

Carl Sagan

3.3k

27

The Planiverse

A. K. Dewdney

3.3k

28

Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

3.2k

29

The Vital Question

Nick Lane

3.1k

30

The Evolution of Desire

David Buss

3.0k

31

Reinforcement Learning

Richard Sutton, Andrew Barto

2.9k

32

The Five Ages of the Universe

Fred C. Adams

2.9k

33

Campbell Biology

Unknown

2.8k

34

I Contain Multitudes

Ed Yong

2.8k

35

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Christopher Bishop

2.8k

36

Our Mathematical Universe

Max Tegmark

2.8k

37

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn

2.8k

38

Crisis of Conscience

Tom Mueller

2.8k

39

Physics for Scientists and Engineers

Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett

2.8k

40

Physics for Scientists and Engineers Study Guide

Gene Mosca, Todd Ruskell

2.8k