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Scientists Biographies for 5th and 6th Graders?
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?"
Here's some biographies of the less conventional scientists:
Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea
Alan Turing. Lesson: if you're gay, your government will use you to win the biggest war in history, then hound you to suicide.
John Nash: Lesson: really, really, really crazy people win Nobel prizes.
Evariste Galois. Lesson: live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Oliver Sacks isn't dead, but he is a scentist. Not the kind of scientist you automatically think of when you hear the word, but he's a clinical neurologist. And this book is entertaining, while sneaking in a lot of facts about science and history that kids will think are cool.
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So, even if it's not strictly a biography, you should consider buying it, anyway. Here, read the review on
I haven't seen these folks mentioned:
Tycho Brahe (Silver noses and burst bladders)
Charles Steinmetz (dwarfism, socialism, and alternating current! Oh, my!)
Benjamin Franklin (A little inventing, a little politics, and a lot of great one-liners)
Archimedes (just plain awesome)
It's an oldie, but a goodie. He proved to me that applies pure science can be an amazing thing. Got me interested in plant genetics, actually. His work created industries and jobs that didn't exist before he did his work.
Richard P. Feynman. Read Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and you'll understand. :))
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Richard Feynmann, not only for being one of the most awesome scientists ever, but for his passion and sense of fun, he makes physics look a lot less like a subject for "eggheads". John von Neumann, because he was a godlike intellect and far more important to the 20th century than your man in the street realises. Freeman Dyson, because his imagination would appeal to youngsters - stuff like genetically engineering diamond-toothed turtles to eat all the garbage off the US Highway system. Really, you could blindfold youself and throw a dart into a room full of the most important scientists of the 20th & 21st centuries, and chances are you'd hit someone that no-one without a science background's ever heard of. I do not condone the throwing of darts and important scientists.
I second the vote for Nikola Tesla. Godel, Hopper and others are great, but someone like Tesla -- a brilliant scientist with a notable weirdness/insanity to him -- would be much more fascinating to kids. At least when I was younger science was much more interesting if it could be classified as "mad science."