Lives of Scientists

Five fascinating books about scientists, selected by historian of science Jimena Canales. She explains how the scientific persona has been constructed throughout history and explores the implicit assumptions about agency, subjectivity, and causality that underlie scientific biographies.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) has become an iconic figure for women in science and is often credited with the invention of modern computing. But, as Ursula Martin—mathematician, computer scientist and Lovelace biographer—explains, all of that is a bit overblown. The Lovelace myth obscures the truth about a woman who was certainly a very brilliant mathematician, but who was also often frustrated in her scientific ambitions, in poor health and unhappy.

John Maynard Keynes famously cast Isaac Newton not as the first scientist of the age of reason, but the last of the magicians. How should we interpret the million words he wrote, in secret, on alchemy? What should we make of Newton's heretical religious views? William Newman talks us through the best books for a better understanding of the complex man who was one of the greatest physicists of all time.

The astronomy professor says the process of scientific discovery can be slow and messy – but that reading about some of the extraordinary personalities involved brings the history alive

From the Swiss patent applications that helped inspire his thinking on relativity to the scientist he fell madly in love with but later divorced, biographer Walter Isaacson recommends books on the life and work of Albert Einstein. (Isaacson's biography of Einstein was described as "a thorough exploration of his subject's life, a skilful piece of scientific literature and a thumping good read" in a Guardian review and has also been recommended by novelist Ian McEwan on Five Books.)