Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Biography and the History of Science

  • Chapter
Relocating the History of Science

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 312))

Abstract

As a genre at the intersection of history and literature, biography challenges its writer to decide organizational rules and elements of plot that are faithful to the subject and attractive to the reader. Mary Jo Nye suggests that there are three principal forms of biography in which the subject is a scientist: the life of the scientist, the scientific life, and the life of scientific collaboration. She explains the meaning of these terms by drawing upon a range of recent biographies in modern science, including Kostas Gavroglu’s biography of Fritz London.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Strachey’s first great biographical success was Eminent Victorians (1918) with biographies of Henry Edward Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Charles George Gordon.

  2. 2.

    Birgitte Possing gives as an example for hero worship: Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841); for hagiography: John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563); and for ethical biography: Plutarch’s second-century Parallel Lives.

  3. 3.

    Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of American History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is an author of biographies.

  4. 4.

    I am grateful to Ruth Sime and David Cassidy for answering my question about sales.

  5. 5.

    Hargittai’s five Martians are Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller.

References

  • Abir-Am, Pnina G., and Dorinda Outram (eds.). 1987. Uneasy careers and intimate lives: Women in science, 1787–1979. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banner, Lois W. 2004. Intertwined lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and their circle. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. 1993. Lavoisier: Mémoires d’une revolution. Paris: Flammarion.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. 2005. American Prometheus: The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boswell, James. 1791. Life of Samuel Johnson. London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry.

    Google Scholar 

  • Capshew, James H., et al. 2003. Kinsey’s biographers: A historiographical reconnaissance. Journal of the History of Sexuality 12(3): 465–486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cassidy, David. 1991. Uncertainty: The life and science of Werner Heisenberg. New York: Freeman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cassidy, David C. 2005. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American century. New York: Pi Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charpentier-Morize, Micheline. 1997. Jean Perrin, 1870–1942: Savant et homme politique. Paris: Belin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coen, Deborah R. 2007. Vienna in the age of uncertainty: Science, liberalism, and private life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Daumas, Maurice. 1955. Lavoisier, théoricien et expérimenteur. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Everitt, C.W.F. 1996. A physicist’s journey. Science 272(5266): 1273–1274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farmelo, Graham. 2009. The strangest man: The hidden life of Paul Dirac, mystic of the atom. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gavroglu, Kostas. 1995. Fritz London: A scientific biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Mott T. 2007. Writing scientific biography. Journal of the History of Biology 40: 727–759.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hargittai, Istvan. 2008. Martians of science: Five physicists who changed the twentieth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris Poll. 2011. One in six Americans now use e-reader with one in six likely to purchase in next six months. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/864/Default.aspx. Accessed 7 Feb 2014.

  • Heilbron, John L. 1986. The dilemmas of an upright man: Max Planck as spokesman for German science. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmann, Dieter. 2008. Max Planck: Die Entstehung der modernen Physik. Munich: Beck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 1974. Claude Bernard and animal chemistry: The emergence of a scientist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 1985. Lavoisier and the chemistry of life: An exploration of scientific creativity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 1991. Hans Krebs: The formation of a scientific life 1900–1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 1993. Hans Krebs: Architect of intermediary metabolism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 2001. Meselson, Stahl, and the replication of DNA: A history of ‘the most beautiful experiment in biology. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 2004. Investigative pathways: Patterns and stages in the careers of experimental scientists. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Richard. 2012. The scientist within. Nature 489: 498–499.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoskin, Michael. 2007. The Herschels of Hanover. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howard, Don. 2008. Time for a moratorium? Isaacson, Einstein, and the challenge of scientific biography. Journal of Historical Biography 3: 124–133.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkin, John. 2008. William and Lawrence Bragg, father and son: The most extraordinary collaboration in science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Journal of Historical Biography. 2012. http://www.ufv.ca/jhb/news.html. Accessed 7 Feb 2014.

  • Kragh, Helge. 1990. Dirac: A scientific biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, Laura. 2002. The newness of the ‘new biography’: Biographical theory and practice in the early twentieth century. In Mapping lives: The uses of biography, ed. Peter France and William St. Clair, 193–218. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Karl. 1963. The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKie, Douglas. 1936. Antoine Lavoisier: The father of modern chemistry. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKie, Douglas. 1952. Antoine Lavoisier: Scientist, economist, social reformer. New York: Collier.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMillan, Priscilla. 2005. The ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the birth of the modern arms race. New York: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monk, Ray. 2013. Robert Oppenheimer: His life and mind (a life inside the center). New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nasaw, David. 2009. Introduction to AHR roundtable ‘historians and biography’. American Historical Review 114(3): 573–578.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nye, Mary Jo. 1972. Molecular reality: A perspective on the scientific work of Jean Perrin. London/New York: Macdonald/American Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nye, Mary Jo. 2004. Blackett: Physics, war, and politics in the 20th century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nye, Mary Jo. 2007. Scientific biography in the history of chemistry: The role of Dexter and Edelstein award winners in the last fifty years. Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 32: 21–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nye, Mary Jo. 2009. Scientific families: Biographies and ‘labographies’ in the history of science. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 39(1): 104–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nye, Mary Jo. 2011. Michael Polanyi and his generation: Origins of the social construction of science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Otis, Laura. 2007. Müller’s lab. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1949. Review of Paul Freedman. The principles of scientific research (1949). Manchester Guardian, 3 August.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1969. My time with x-rays and crystals. In Knowing and being, ed. Marjorie Grene, 97–104. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul (Reprinted from Fifty years of x-ray diffraction, ed. P.P. Ewald, 629–636. Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1962).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pomeroy, Wardell B. 1972. Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Possing, Birgitte. 2004. The historical biography: Genre, history and methodology. In Writing lives in sport: Biographies, life-histories and methods, eds. John Bale, Mette K. Christensen, and Gertrud Phister, 17–25 in Acta Jutlandica LXXVIII: 3, Humanities series 77. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Possing, Birgitte. 2012. Biography: Historical http://www.possing.dk/pdf/historicalbio.pdf. Accessed 7 Feb 2014.

  • Pycior, Helena, et al. (eds.). 1996. Creative couples in the sciences. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pyenson, Lewis. 1977. ‘Who the guys were’: Prosopography in the history of science. History of Science 15: 155–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Redniss, Lauren. 2011. Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie. A tale of love and fallout. New York: It Books/Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Royal Society of London. 2012. Royal Society Hosts Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon to write women into history of science. http://royalsociety.org/news/2012/women-wikipedia-science/. Accessed 7 Feb 2014.

  • Rupke, Nicolaas A. 2005. Alexander von Humboldt: A metabiography. New York: Peter Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweber, Silvan S. 1994. QED and the men who made it: Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweber, Silvan S. 2000. In the shadow of the bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the moral responsibility of the scientist. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweber, Silvan S. 2012. Nuclear forces: The making of the physicist Hans Bethe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shapin, Steven. 2006. Lives after death. Nature 441(5266): 286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapin, Steven, and Arnold Thackray. 1974. Prosopography as a research tool in history of science: The British Scientific Community, 1700–1900. History of Science 12: 1–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shortland, Michael, and Richard Yeo (eds.). 1996. Telling lives in science: Essays on scientific biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sime, Ruth. 1996. Lise Meitner: A life in physics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Söderqvist, Thomas. 2003. Science as autobiography: The troubled life of Niels Jerne. Trans. David Mel Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Söderqvist, Thomas (ed.). 2007. The history and poetics of scientific biography. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strachey, Lytton. 1918. Eminent Victorians. Garden City: Garden City Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strachey, Lytton. 1928. Elizabeth and Essex: A tragic history. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szöllösi-Janze, Margit. 1998. Fritz Haber, 1868–1934: Eine Biographie. Munich: C.H. Beck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thorpe, Charles. 2006. Oppenheimer: The tragic intellect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Von Bayer, Hans Christian. 2013. Review of Jeremy Gray. In Henri Poincaré: A scientific biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Physics in Perspective 15(3): 362–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wigner, E.P., and R.A. Hodgkin. 1977. Michael Polanyi 12 March 1891–22 February 1976. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 23: 410–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woolf, Virginia. 1942. The art of biography (1939). In The death of the moth and other essays, 187–197. New York: Harcourt Brace.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Mary Jo Nye

Authors
  1. Mary Jo Nye
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mary Jo Nye .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Theodore Arabatzis

  2. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

    Jürgen Renn

  3. Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e Tecnologia (CIUHCT), Faculdade de Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Simões

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Nye, M.J. (2015). Biography and the History of Science. In: Arabatzis, T., Renn, J., Simões, A. (eds) Relocating the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 312. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14553-2_19

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation