For bonus points, would the answer be Neal Stephenson?
Did you actually read the whole Baroque cycle? I got part of the way through Quicksilver, but then had a strange feeling that Stephenson would just be telling me a lot of stuff I had already learned in physics, and skimmed through the rest and saw Newton, Leibniz, Boyle, etc, etc, and put the book down.
Yeah, I read it. I barely made it through the first book, but the second one was worth the pain. That was my favorite of the three (half the book focuses on the Shaftoe family).
In fact, I thought that Quicksilver was the worst of the bunch. Looking back, I realized that I didn't like Quicksilver too much because it served as a really long setup for the two other books, and there wasn't much action in it either.
I've never read the Baroque cycle.
Ironically in the interview with Guido linked in the entry below, he says Quicksilver is his favourite book. 
Commenting by HaloScan
