Scientific biography

Jimena CanalesHistorian. Part one is called Charles Darwin: Voyaging.

Scientific biography

Five fascinating books about scientists, selected by historian of science Jimena Canales. She explains how the scientific persona has been constructed throughout history and explores the implicit assumptions about agency, subjectivity, and causality that underlie scientific biographies. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week. Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases. Support Us. Scientific Biographies Last updated: September 04, Biographies of scientists recommended by scientists and other experts on Five Books.

Buy now Listen now. Buy now. Then, somehow, when she wrote this biography she came into her own. Learn More About Rachel Carson. Learn More About Alan Turing. Elion, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine indeveloped 45 patents in medicine throughout her remarkable career. Inshe and her team created the antiviral drug acyclovir that debunked the idea that any drug capable of killing a virus would be too toxic for humans.

Learn More About Gertrude B. The West Virginia native helped perform the mathematical calculations necessary to determine their correct flight paths. Her inspiring true story was told in the movie Hidden Figureswith Taraji P. Henson playing her on the big screen. Learn More About Katherine Johnson. That pair went on to create the double helix model for DNA structure.

Franklin died from ovarian cancer at age Learn More About Rosalind Franklin. Once she understood chimpanzees, Goodall turned her efforts to preserving their habitats and preventing unethical treatment of the animals in scientific experiments. Learn More About Jane Goodall. Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams. Martin Luther King Jr. Jimmy Carter. Bob Dylan. Alice Munro. Chien-Shiung Wu.

Marie Curie. Henry Kissinger. Nicolaus Copernicus Getty Images. Astronomer and mathematician For centuries, people incorrectly believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo Galilei Getty Images. Physicist and astronomer Galileo changed how we literally see the world by taking early telescopes and improving their scientific biography. One reviewer of another work wrote that "The Dictionary of Scientific Biography DSB has become the standard against which to measure all multi-volume biographical works in history of science.

Additionally, two major historians of science were omitted among the contributors, Joseph Needham and Otto Neugebauer. According to Donald Fleming, the worst account was that of J. Bernal by C. Snowwhile Joseph Needham found it the most brilliant entry. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable scientific biography.

In other projects. Wikidata item. Reference work with biographies of scientists. Dictionary of Scientific Biography [ edit ]. New Dictionary of Scientific Biography [ edit ]. This was a traditional reference work focusing on the natural sciences and mathematics and largely on the great men of science. The professionalisation of the history of science was still underway when the entries were written, and the end-result is a mixture of critical scholarly essays and straightforward biographies, both excellent in their own ways, not least for their very complete bibliographies.

Although two supplementary volumes were published in to cover recently deceased scientists, there was a clear need to bring the DSB up to date. It lacks the great increase in our understanding of the lives of many scientists sinceand it does not cover the more modern scientific biographies, such as computer science or ecology.

Nor does it adequately cover female scientists, scientists from non-Western countries, or ethnic minority scientists. As users of the NDSB, we obviously seek breadth of coverage, accuracy, and the best modern scholarship by the leading authorities on these scientists. How far does the NDSB meet our needs? But we could no longer aspire to such completeness.

They used statistical analysis of the volume of chemical research carried out in different countries to allocate a specific numbers of entries to each of these countries. While one would always wish for more entries on chemists, I believe that the editors have done well to achieve the coverage that we have. All of the chemists on a purely arbitrary list that I made of twelve major twentieth-century chemists were either in the DSB or in the NDSB, except for one chemist who died after the selection process was already underway.

Doing this exercise made me realise what a great pity it is that the NDSB does not contain a list of entries in the DSB in the index volume. The new entries on chemists are generally by acknowledged authorities on their subjects. This is not to say that they are all perfect. Some are too long relative to the importance of the subject, and a few are too hagiographic.

Inevitably in a work of this length, there are inaccuracies; for instance, the entry on Bayer says that he became a board member of IG Farben inwhich is incorrect, and it was Herbert Rein who developed polyacrylonitrile, not Reim and it is acrylonitrile in English, not acrylonitril. The lack of good copy-editing also shows up in the use of the German beta-S in the entry on Barton and a capital B in the entry on Martin instead of the correct Greek beta.

The index is also rather problematic. The division of chemists between different categories is not always correct; for instance, Herman Mark was a physical chemist, not an organic chemist, and Fritz Haber was a physical chemist, not an inorganic chemist. It is a pity that there are no categories for polymer chemistry and industrial chemistry.