This definitive reference offers you concise, authoritative, and up-to-date coverage of every major field of science and technology. In articles authored by scientists and engineers at the forefront of their fields (including 19 Nobel Prize winners), and written to be accessible to the general reader as well as the scientific user, this newly revised volume covers 75 major fields of science and engineering, including current and critical advances in fast-developing fields such as virology, genetics, computer science, and oceanography. Richly illustrated, it also features biographical sketches of the world's top scientists, a superb index, cross references, and bibliographies. No other reference offers scientists, researchers, students, and the interested public such definitive and inclusive coverage of science and technology in a single volume.