Telling Lives in Science
Essays on Scientific Biography

Collects together original essays by leading historians of science on the nature and development of scientific biography.

Michael Shortland (Edited by), Richard Yeo (Edited by)

9780521433235, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 June 1996

310 pages, 3 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.698 kg

Review of the hardback: 'This collection of essays is useful and timely.' Ludmilla Jordanova, Metascience

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, concentrating on such icons as Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Humphry Davy, Florence Nightingale and Sir Joseph Banks. With its broad sweep and careful, imaginative scholarship, this volume provides a timely and challenging examination of an important aspect of the culture of science that will be of special interest to historians of science, academics and students, and the general reader interested in the popularization of science.

List of contributors
Preface
Introduction Michael Shortland and Richard Yeo
1. Existential projects and existential choice in science: science biography as an edifying genre Thomas Söderqvist
2. Life paths: autobiography, science and the French Revolution Dorinda Outram
3. From science to wisdom: Humphry Davy's life David Knight
4. Robert Boyle and the dilemma of biography in the age of the scientific revolution Michael Hunter
5. Alphabetical lives: scientific biography in historical dictionaries and encyclopedias Richard Yeo
6. The scientist as hero: public images of Michael Faraday Geoffrey Cantor
7. Tactful organising and executive power: biographies of Florence Nightingale for girls Martha Vicinus
8. Taking histories, medical lives: Thomas Beddoes and biography Roy Porter
9. The scientist as patron and patriotic symbol: the changing reputation of Joseph Banks John Gascoigne
10. Metabiographical reflections on Charles Darwin James Moore
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]