5 Best Science Biographies of All Time
Books that portray the most brilliant minds in the most elegant ways
The one habit that I suggest everyone should develop is a reading habit. In this day and age, reading books doesn’t just provide you with valuable information but also enhances your vocab skills, your reading and writing skills, your presentation skills, and your overall communication skills. Several books were published in the year 2021. One of my favorite genres of books is biographies. Since I am particularly interested in the historical significance of physics and mathematics, I usually read non-fiction historical books — mostly biographies and autobiographies. In this article, I shall be suggesting five amazing scientific biographies that I believe every science lover should have in their reading list. The books aren’t sponsored or promoted in any way but are recommended to the enthusiasts of science and scientific literature based on their clarity, wit, selling records, and the historical significance that they carry.
Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard Feynman is considered to be one of the most prolific scientists of the 20th century. Best known for his Lectures in Physics, his contributions to the development of Quantum Electrodynamics, and Feynman diagrams, the man was also an impeccable artist and an author. Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman is an autobiography of the physicist published in 1985. The book includes several phases of Feynman’s life and very well portrays his character. It explains several instances of Feynman’s career from his childhood to his career as a physicist and a professor winning a Nobel Prize. The book is a thrilling read and a gem in the field of scientific literature that I think every science lover must read at least once. In part 5 of the book titled The World of One Physicist, p. 261, Feynman states,
“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion. It’s analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there’s a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run “behind the scenes” by the same organization, the same physical laws. It’s an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It’s a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”
Feynman won the 1965 Nobel prize in Physics for his works on QED and this autobiography was a New York Times bestseller.
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius
The ones who are familiar with Richard Feynman are surely familiar with physicist Paul Dirac too. Dirac is one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics best known for his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics and the formulation of the Dirac equation which implies the existence of anti-particles in the universe. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius is a book written by a physicist and popular science author Graham Farmelo. The book, as the title suggests, is based upon the life of physicist and Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac. Theoretical physicist Niels Bohr considered Dirac as the strangest man out of all the scientists who visited his institute. The title is inspired by Bohr’s comment on Dirac. The book was published in 2009 and covers several aspects of Dirac’s life.
It also claims that Dirac must have been autistic which could have been the reason behind his characteristically amazing eccentricities. Farmelo has divided the book into a total of thirty-one chapters with some great black and white pictures of the physicist presented at the end of the book.
“When Dirac was an old man, younger physicists often asked him how he felt when he discovered the [Dirac] equation. From his replies, it seems that he alternated between ecstasy and fear: although elated to have solved his problem so neatly, he worried that he would be the latest victim of the ‘great tragedy of science’ described in 1870 by Thomas Huxley; ‘the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact’. Dirac later confessed that his dread of such an outcome was so intense that he was ‘too scared’ to use it to make detailed predictions of the energy levels of atomic hydrogen — a test that he knew it had to pass. He did an approximate version of the calculation and showed that there was acceptable agreement but did not go on to risk failure by subjecting his theory to a more rigorous examination.”
The biography of the physicist can be an exciting read for all physics enthusiasts as Dirac is one of the most influential physicists of all time and there’s so many more to learn from the book than just his life.
The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
John Neumann is a legendary name in the field of computer science, physics, and mathematics. He is considered to be a polymath and one of the smartest human beings to have ever lived on this planet. Best known for his contributions to mathematical group theory, geometry, quantum statistical mechanics, and linear programming, Von Neumann is regarded as the last representative of the great mathematicians.
The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann is an exhilarating biography of John von Neumann written by Ananyo Bhattacharya. The book was recently published in 2021 and is A FINANCIAL TIMES AND TLS book of the year. The writer has done the finest job in portraying the life and contributions of the giant of mathematics and computing. We owe the development of several modern technologies to Von Neumann and this book is highly recommended for the ones who love reading popular science literature.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
If you are an avid science reader, the name Walter Isaacson must be familiar to you. Isaacson is a historian of science and a prolific biographer who had written the best-selling book Einstein: His Life and Universe and has again published another great biography based on the life, career, and contributions of an American biochemist Jennifer Doudna. Doudna received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier for the development of a method for genome editing. The book was recently published in March 2021 and was debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending March 13, 2021.
The book is an extremely exciting read for all science lovers particularly the ones interested in genetics and the human genome. The book talks about several aspects from viruses, to depression and primarily about the discovery of a gene-editing technology called the CRISPR which opened several new windows for modern medical miracles. The book is highly inspirational for those of you interested in biology, particularly in genetics and DNA. Doudna was highly inspired by another great science literature masterpiece called The Double Helix which is the next in our list.
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
This is one of the most important science books of all time, published in 1968. The book is one of the pure classics in scientific literature written by American molecular biologist and zoologist Dr. James Watson. It is an autobiographical account of the discovery of the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The discovery is considered the most important microbiological discovery in 20th-century science. The book by Dr. Watson does a phenomenal job in describing the thrilling journey and its various aspects along with shedding light on several controversies regarding the role of female scientists in the same. The 1962 Nobel Physiology Prize was awarded to Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and James Watson for their contributions to the discovery.
The book itself is a startling reading experience from its very beginning to the end and is a must-read for anyone interested in science and scientific history. I highly recommend this book as it shares a unique experience of the most significant discovery about life and does so in such an elegant and beautiful manner. The book was an International best seller and is highly appreciated by science readers all across the world. In one of the chapters of the book, Dr. Watson mentions,
“One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”
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