Biology Geology

Buckle up for a joy ride through physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and her own work as an award-winning science writer, Natalie Angier does the impossible: she makes science fascinating and seriously fun, even for those of us who, in Angier's words, "still can't tell the difference between a proton, a photon, and a moron".

In his last book, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human anatomy—our hands, our jaws—and the structures in the fish that first took over land 375 million years ago. Now, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, he takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we are the way we are.

I recently came upon an old book entitled Famous Men in Science by Sarah Knowles Bolton that was first published in 1889. In her enjoyable and easy to read text, Bolton provides a glimpse of 14 distinguished thinkers, ranging from such luminaries as Carl Linnaeus to Louis Agassiz. Since the book is not readily available, here at the MSAC Philosophy Group we thought it might be helpful to select four biographies from Famous Men in Science and republish them in a new and readable format.