Biography of scientists pdf writer

Nearly two decades on from the explosion in popular-science publishing, books by luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins are still selling in six figures, and authors such as Brian Cox and Rebecca Skloot are drawing a younger generation of readers.

But I am struck by a new emphasis — on popular-science biography. As I learned while researching my book The Age of Wonder (Harper, 2008), the “life scientific” can be an extraordinarily gripping adventure.

There is a noble tradition of science biography stretching back to the 1600s.

Recently, a fresh hunger to understand the making of science through the making of scientists has emerged. We want to read about scientific work as part of a life story — to know what makes a scientist tick, and what set them ticking.

We are intrigued to learn that Dawkins, the eminent biologist and atheist, had “a normal Anglican upbringing”, was inspired by the Dr Doolittle books and taught in 1960s San