Nature and people

The collection includes scientific talks of the remarkable popularizer of science Yakov Isidorovich Perelman (1882-1942), published by him in 1901-1918 in the magazine "Nature and People". The book familiarizes to the world of scientific knowledge, helps to instill in the reader a taste for the study of exact sciences, arouses interest in independent creative studies.
For middle school students, students and students of technical schools, for all those who want to fill the gaps in their education.
Yakov Isidorovich Perelman (1882-1942) was neither a physicist, nor a mathematician, nor an astronomer, — he graduated from the Forest Institute in St. Petersburg (now SPbGLTU). He was neither a writer nor a teacher, — but he corresponded with the greatest scientists and writers of the world, worked on compiling new textbooks and problem books on mathematics and physics, gave more than two thousand popular lectures, wrote about a hundred popular science books and countless journal articles. He did not make any scientific discoveries or inventions, — but he participated in the design of the first Soviet anti-grad rocket, was the initiator of the introduction of fiat time in our country, one of the founders of the genre of popular science literature and the author of the term "science fiction". He did not have any academic degrees and titles, — but grateful readers in their letters invariably addressed him "Dear Professor!".
All because in his works Yakov Isidorovich presented complex scientific problems in his own inimitable style, with remarkable clarity and clarity; in the most seemingly dry and boring topics he was able to find bright, fascinating features, and they became extremely understandable even to the untrained reader. It is not surprising that the books of the "People's Professor of the Soviet Union" have survived dozens of reprints, have been translated into many languages, from English to Hindi, and their total circulation has now amounted to tens of millions of copies.
The present edition contains almost all scientific talks by Ya. I. Perelman, published by him in 1901-1918 in the journal "Nature and People". Why "almost all"? The fact is that a significant part of these talks were without any signature at all, and now it is not possible to firmly establish the authorship of each of them. In addition, over the past century, some essays — such as "The position of the planets for 1903", — have inevitably lost their relevance and will hardly be informative for the reader of the XXI century.
When editing the articles included in the collection, we only replaced some outdated figures, made some additions and notes, but as far as possible preserved the spirit of the time when they were created, — when new discoveries were not yet properly interpreted, the airplane was more often called an airplane, Albert Einstein was a modest employee of the Patent Office, and the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells delighted readers with his new works. The scientific content of Yakov Isidorovich's articles is selected in such a way that it can never become outdated.