History of Science Open Thread

Apart from the obvious answer of Darwin, John Stevens Henslow always struck me as an interesting character. And Richard Owen.

Outside the extended Darwin circle, I keep meaning to read up more on Michael Faraday. I have an unread biography on my bookshelf, which fills me with guilt every time I catch sight of it. I will read it before the year is out.

As a kid, I read biographies of people like Marie Kyrie, Faraday, etc. Later I was intrigued by Haeckel. I am more likely to focus on the history of an idea than a single person, though.

Richard; Is there a good biography of Owen? I think we definitely need one. He was such a complicated character and is too often portrayed as the villain Huxley and Darwin were fighting against. There was much to dislike about him, certainly, but I would love to see someone explain what he actually thought and said rather than judging him by his reaction to natural selection (as many seem wont to do).

The two historical figures I have been most interested in lately, but have found it hard to find too much information on, are Mary Anning and Dorothea Bate. My interest in both has been mostly due to my time spent at the Natural History Museum, London, and in my quest to find something to study for my Masters thesis. Both were literally pioneers in their day, being the first women to work in what was previously a male dominated career.

I admire Bate's work in discovering and describing several dwarf mammals from the Greek Islands and Cyprus, and, having seen most of the specimens from her expeditions there at the Museum, I think it is inspiring to me as a budding palaeontologist to get out there and look for things. I have a postcard of Anning above my desk which also is somewhat inspiring. Any detailed biographies of either Anning or Bate out there?

Also I have a question about the Huxley caricature; I know there are others in the series (Owen, Darwin and Wilburforce as far as I know), but are the more, and where are the originals? I have seen this series in Oxford just the other day in the Natural History Museum there, but I don't know if they are the originals.

I read and enjoyed Desmond's "Huxley" a few years ago. The book is flawed but riveting (Desmond's prose is like triple-fudge brownies for dinner - a little goes a loooong way and the law of diminishing returns sets in quickly). A study of Owen would be very interesting. I recently picked up a relatively new history of Chambers's "Vestiges" - another fascinating event in the evolution of Victorian natural science that few know much about.

I've become quite fascinated with the big players of the Alberta Dinosaur rush of the 1910's (for the obvious reason that it all happened in my old backyard).

In particular the Sternberg clan I'd say are my favs, but of course you can't appreciate much of what they were up to (George especially) unless you know Barnum Brown was doing as well. I'm spoiled with some good books being out there about them, and working with modern Alberta palaeo history guru Darren Tanke who NEEDS to write a new book on them!

I also LOVE the interplay of Marsh and Cope during their bone wars. Anyone and everyone who likes palaeo MUST go out and buy the comic/graphic novel Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology. Its a brilliant (though the authors admit a little dramatized) telling of the key parts of their conflict. The best part is at the back they have a trust vs. fiction break down of EVERY page and tell you what was real, and what they fudged or made up.

If you can find a copy of Azimov's "Biographical History of Science" at a reasonable price, grab it. I have the second editon which has biographies of 1500 scientists arranged by birthdate. There is a lot of cross referencing from one scientist to others. I think it has been criticized as not being as accurate as it might be, and considerable use of secondary sources. It is, never-the-less, fascinating to read.

Joseph Dalton Hooker: http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-meme-favorite-…

I know of a biography of Owen - I've never flipped through or read it, but the description says the author "looks beyond the evolution dispute and presents the complete range of Owen`s scientific and intellectual achievements, portraying him as the founder of London`s monumental Natural History Museum, a leader in Victorian scientific reform, and, after Darwin, the leading naturalist of 19th-century Britain."

Well, I did enjoy Pat Shipman's biography of Eugene Dubois, "The man who found the missing link". (She did a good job on Archaeopteryx as well, in "Taking wing: Archaeopteryx and the evolution of bird flight".) But I tend to enjoy the 'period' pieces as much as the books that focus on a single individual: "Bones of contention" (Paul Chambers) & "Dragon bones: the story of Peking Man" (Penny van Oosterzee) spring to mind as recent reads.

Recently I did a presentation for our local school-aged science club on the life and work of Roy Chapman Andrews, adventurer and biologist, leader of the Central Asiatic Expeditions (which recorded the first confirmed discovery of dinosaur eggs), and former head of the American Museum of Natural History. There's an excellent biography of Andrews by Charles Gallenkamp called Dragon Hunter, published about eight years ago. It's a good source on Andrews - his own books are quite riveting too.

I'm also reading The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (2008) by George Johnson and The Prism and the Pendulum: the Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science (2003) by Robert Crease, which are both firing my imagination and making me want to go back and find biographies of all those cited (the two books overlap on three experiments, I think, giving a total of seventeen really beautiful experiments, apparently).

Also, would it be clich�d to mention James Burke? I think that his books and television shows are fantastic for picking up the history of science, and I'm currently re-watching The Day the Universe Changed, with the collusion of my local library (you can find it on YouTube too). Brilliant stuff that opens up lots of possibilities for further reading...

Huxley is my favourite memetic ancestor, as much for his cutting wit as for his science and critical thinking. When he heard that Bishop Wilberforce (Soapy Sam) has been killed after falling off a horse, Huxley exclaimed "Alas his head has finally come into contact with reality, and the result was fatal!"

I've been a fan of William Colenso since I had to review one of the species he described (Phalangium (Phrynus) cheliferoides). Sadly, the species was unidentifiable, but the original paper is such a wonderful romp (describing Colenso's attempts to pursue the specimen through the woodlands) that I couldn't be annoyed.

Colenso was certainly a colourful character - botanist, occassional entomologist, missionary (though he was defrocked after the discovery he had been fiddling with his wife's Maori maid), author of the first Maori translation of the New Testament and almost author of the first Maori-English dictionary.