Nature
"Engineers are titans of real-world problem-solving, yet are strangely invisible, notes biomedical engineer Guru Madhavan. In this riveting study of how they think, he puts behind-the-scenes geniuses such as Margaret Hutchinson, who designed the first penicillin-production plant, centre stage."
Science - Sybil Derrible
"Engaging…[and] insightful."
Discover - Gemma Tarlach
"An accessible and very human story of innovators."
Tim Harford
"A real pleasure to read, and lots to learn."
Wall Street Journal - Jon Gertner
"The heroes of Guru Madhavan’s compact book about the logical habits of engineers are not the usual suspects of the iPhone era. With barely a mention of Wozniak or Jobs, the author takes us back to an earlier time so that we can witness the solving of problems that have long since gone away."
Nancy Szokan
"Anyone trying to interest America’s young people in technical careers should read Applied Minds…. Writing with a liveliness that reflects the energized, creative, problem-solving people he talks about, Madhavan, a biomedical engineer, presents a completely engaging survey of what engineers do—and why you wish you could do it, too."
Walter Isaacson
"In this smart, insightful, and fascinating book, Madhavan shows how engineers turn problems into opportunities. The engineering mind-set is something we should all study and embrace. It applies to every aspect of life."
Robin Tatu
"An unabashed celebration of engineers and their ‘plug and play’ thinking tool kit…. Applied Minds is worth sharing with young engineering students."
Henry Petroski
"This thoroughly engaging book demonstrates that engineering thinking is truly multidisciplinary, multinational, and multicultural. Through its diverse cast of engineers and wide-ranging examples of their achievements, Applied Minds leaves little doubt that our world is a better place because of the engineers who inhabit it."
Nature Lib
"Engineers are titans of real-world problem-solving, yet are strangely invisible, notes biomedical engineer Guru Madhavan. In this riveting study of how they think, he puts behind-the-scenes geniuses such as Margaret Hutchinson, who designed the first penicillin-production plant, centre stage."
Kirkus Reviews
2015-04-15
Want to be an engineer? Then learn to think like one, especially by learning how to see structure where chaos abounds. Engineers aren't like ordinary mortals. Ideally, they're Spock-like creatures who think logically about all things. That's one reason, writes engineer/economist/National Academy of Sciences adviser Madhavan in an interesting aside, engineers aren't often found in politics, in which participants in the melee "show no reluctance to make bold pronouncements beyond their areas of competence." Engineers, conversely, dislike making mistakes and oversimplifying, and in theory, their line of reasoning steers clear of value judgments of the sort politics is built on. Not that the engineering mind yields utopias: as Madhavan sagely notes, optimization algorithms may yield financial windfalls, but they also "had an ‘invisible hand' in financial disasters," just as the liberating technology of cellphones now means that people are chained to their work at all hours. So how do engineers think? With quantitative rigor, of course, and with qualitative objectivity. Madhavan's opening case studies, which "demonstrate the power of engineers to convert feelings into finished products," take their time in cohering, but eventually they settle down to look at the issues of structure, constraint, and trade-off, as well as the allied concepts of "recombination, optimization, efficiency, and prototyping." One need not be employed as an engineer in order to put these principles to use; as Madhavan notes in one of the best case studies in the book, the film director Alfred Hitchcock was trained as an engineer and employed these practices in his movies: "Hitchcock was a backward thinker. His final product was preordained but flexible. He valued implementation over improvisation." Madhavan is a less engaging writer than Henry Petroski, who covers much the same ground, but he provides a readable survey for would-be engineers and those seeking to understand them.
