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?"

Comments

Kurt Godel

[andrewman327]

I attend a large private university in America and I only learned about Kurt Godel through a biography project last year. I have written many bios in my time and Godel is an incredible person. Even Einstein was good friends with him. Godel contributed so many great ideas to the world and is so poorly recognized.

Less conventional scientists

[FleaPlus]

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

Feynman, Darwin, and Ricketts

[DeanPentcheff]

Richard Feynman
Charles Darwin
Ed Ricketts

Feynman because he is the exemplar of a truly clever person.

Charles Darwin because he had such an astonishingly insightful way of slowly accumulating information until he could see the "big picture".

Ed Ricketts because he had such an intensely committed life in biology that he is a wonderful example of how doing science can be an intensely fun life -- quite the opposite of the cold passionlessness one usually sees portrayed in science biographies

My suggestions

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Évariste Galois is the immediate, obvious choice.

Of course Albert Einstein would probably be in the library, but it's worth making sure there's a good biography that explains his struggles as a child, his annus mirabilis, how his Nobel was for the photoelectric effect, what E=mc^2 and relativity really are, how he was invited to be PM of Israel, etc.

I suppose it's entirely appropriate for 5th and 6th graders to know there was indeed a real Nicholas Flamel.

Another fascinating biography is that of Thomas Midgley, the poor soul who came up with three ideas that seemed brilliant at the time: leaded fuels, CFCs, and a system of ropes and pulleys in his bed that strangled him.

And what middle-schooler would not appreciate the toilet humor in the life of Tycho Brahe, so concerned for court etiquette that he let his bladder clog and kill him?

Mathematicians: great lessons for kids!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

There is this one guy

[chris_eineke]

Richard P. Feynman. Read Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and you'll understand. :))

Re:Greggor Mendel is a good one

[_Sharp'r_]

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.