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Scientists Biographies for 5th and 6th Graders?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the famous-geeks-both-dead-and-alive dept.

kimery asks: "My wife has just been named librarian for a 5th and 6th grade school. As part of the science program, students are required to read several science biographies over the course of the school year. The current biography collection consists mainly of dead (but oh so famous!) scientists. She'd like to expand the collection of science biographies, and would like to have your suggestions as to which scientists should be included. Bonus points for suggesting someone outside the 'usual suspects.' So, what scientists do you think would be interesting for a typical 5th/6th grade student?"

5 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Greggor Mendel is a good one by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Putting into a kid's mind that you could make a lifetime of selectively breeding plants for size and tastiness is a good thing.

    --
    God spoke to me.
    1. Re:Greggor Mendel is a good one by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 3, Informative

      I know some of these are probably among the usual suspects, but maybe she won't have already thought of them as "scientists", since there seem to be a lot of more recent "hard" scientists in the ones people are listing.

      Benjamin Franklin, one of our early US true scientists who has tons of fun stories about his life.

      Thomas Jefferson, who seems to have invented some sort of improvement to just about everything he came into contact with, from windows to agriculture.

      Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek for their contributions to economics and social philosophy. Von Mises scientifically/mathmatically predicted that the roaring 20's would end in a crash and depression and also the final reasons for the economic demise of the Socialist/Communist model long before his theories became popular after the fact.

      Tesla is always fun, if only for all the fun/weird stuff.

      If they don't already have them (they likely do most of them), then Adam Smith, Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, James Maxwell, Robert Boyle, Robert Hook, Bernoulli, Gottfried Leibniz.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
  2. Re:Kurt Godel by chrisb33 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just finished A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein. Though the material is a little dense for those without a background in science and philosophy, I thought the book was great. Kurt Godel never made it on the "usual suspects" list, for some reason, but was one of the most important philosophers/logicians of the last century (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del)

  3. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science ... by Brett+Johnson · · Score: 2, Informative

    Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

    When I was a kid I remember reading this. Last updated in the 1980's [although Asimov's daughter is working on an update], so no new names from the last 25 years. Biographies for over a thousand scientists from ancient egypt to 1982 [with hyperlinks].

    IIRC, the reading level was more geared toward grades 8-10, so it might be a stretch for grades 4-6. [But then again, my high school science teacher had us reading Scientific American articles as an intentional stretch - in the 1970's when Scientific American was still hard science.]

  4. Lise Meitner by N.+P.+Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Hedy Lamarr has been suggested so here's another to inspire the girls:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner

    Helped to invent Nuclear Physics but credit (and Nobel Prize) went a male. Her tombstone reads, "A physicist who never lost her humanity."