Telling Lives in Science Essays on Scientific Biography [Hardcover]

Collects together original essays by leading historians of science on the nature and development of scientific biography.The biography of writers, film stars and historical figures is a hugely popular category of book; so, too, on a lesser scale, is the biography of the scientist. This collection of original essays explores for the first time the nature and development of scientific biography and its importance in forming our ideas about what scientists do, how science works, and why scientific biography remains popular. It is written by historians of science and science biographers in a scholarly but accessible style, and will appeal to academics, students, and the general reader interested in th e popularisation of science.The biography of writers, film stars and historical figures is a hugely popular category of book; so, too, on a lesser scale, is the biography of the scientist. This collection of original essays explores for the first time the nature and development of scientific biography and its importance in forming our ideas about what scientists do, how science works, and why scientific biography remains popular. It is written by historians of science and science biographers in a scholarly but accessible style, and will appeal to academics, students, and the general reader interested in th e popularisation of science.Images of scientists and ideas about science are often communicated to the public through historic biographies of eminent scientists, yet there has been little study of the development of scientific biography. Telling Lives brings together a collection of original essays by leading historians of science, several of them biographers, which explore for the first time the nature and development of scientific biography and its importance in forming our ideas about what scientists do, how science works, and why scientific biography remains popular. Theoretical and historical studies range from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, concentratingl3³