Because science has assumed an ever larger role in culture, scientists have become public figures, role models, and even heroes. Accordingly, scientific biography has grown steadily in popularity.
Biographies of Scientists
provides more than 500 sources of information on scientists for young and adult general readers and for scholars. These sources explain scientists' accomplishments in the context of the personal and career developments that made those accomplishments possible. Among the sources are encyclopedias, periodicals, and individual biographies and autobiographies of researchers in astronomy and cosmology, chemistry, earth sciences, life sciences, mathematics, medical sciences, and physics. An introduction traces the general history and themes of scientific biography, and each entry in the bibliography includes an annotation that discusses and evaluates the biographical source and indicates the most suitable readership for it. The bibliography concludes with indexes of authors, scientists who are the subjects of biographies, and scientific topics.