Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science
By John D Barrow
Bodley Head £25 608 pages
FT Bookshop price: £20

Cambridge don John Barrow interprets links between the arts and science. His 1995 book, The Artful Universe, explored the way in which our aesthetic sense is moulded by the physical structure of our environment. In Cosmic Imagery, Barrow argues that certain images have been particular markers of scientific progress. He chooses a topic – the cosmic microwave background radiation, for example – and selects an image to accompany the text: in this case, the heat spectrum measured by NASA probe Cobe.