Scientists Biographies for 5th and 6th Graders? 162
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?"
Greggor Mendel is a good one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Greggor Mendel is a good one (Score:1)
Re:Greggor Mendel is a good one (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Kurt Godel (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Kurt Godel (Score:2, Informative)
Kurt Godel - prediction (Score:2)
After all, nobody had ever heard of either 9/11 or George W back then eh?
Re:Kurt Godel (Score:1)
Igor Sikorsky for his work on helicopters
Edwin Hubble: Astronomy
Sikorsky FTW! (Score:2)
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Less conventional scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer [amazon.com]
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius [amazon.com]
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea [amazon.com]
Lovelace? (Score:2)
A true story -- I used to work at a university where all of the servers had various 'theme' names. One generation of the mail system was all named after scientists: (Einstein, Boltzman, Planck, Fermi, Faraday, Fourier, Laplace, Joule, Feynman, Hawking (which was mis-named 'Hawkins'), Fuchs, Newton, Curie,
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Back in the early 80's, I started out naming my personal computers after characters in Hamlet. I'm now up to "First Sailor". Sigh. Who knew we'd ever have so many computers or that you'd keep getting new ones instead of upgrading them. Oh well, at least I haven't run out of Beowulf names for my cars.
Give the ladies their due (Score:2)
Marie Curie
Irene Joliot-Curie
Maria Mayer
Lise Meitner
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Linda B. Buck
Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
Sophie Germain
Rosalyn Yalow
Gerty Radnitz Cori
Emmy Noether
Roger Arliner Young
Mary Anning
and of course Danica McKellar
Murray Gell-Mann or Isaac Asimov (Score:2)
If you don't know why Isaac Asimov kicks ass, you should be ashamed.
Grace Hopper (Score:2)
So says Grace Hopper Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].
That was all I could remember until I read the Wikipedia entry. More good stuff is there.
Feynman, Darwin, and Ricketts (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Feynman, Darwin, and Ricketts (Score:2)
Surely you're joking. Mr. Feynman??
(Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.)
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What do you care what other people think?
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As the guy who invented the beer milkshake, I take my hat off to him. Now if only the Navy had paid attention to him and his buddy, when they said they had access to Japanese navel charts, we might not have lost so many men when their landing craft grounded a 1/2 mile off the beaches...
My suggestions (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org].
Another fascinating biography is that of Thomas Midgley [wikipedia.org], 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 [st-and.ac.uk], so concerned for court etiquette that he let his bladder clog and kill him?
Unconventional Einstein (Score:2)
That should be popular, especially some of the quotes:
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
Or, in a private school like the one I went to:
"Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that
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list of famous experiments [wikipedia.org] should give some names to investigate...
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My physics SA PEB matriculation exam (1976) had, on reflection, a Fermi Problem. In fact all the past papers I did had one in them. The question I answered was a bit like "Estimate the total energy expended by waves on a beach". It was fun making a list of assumptions and coming up with an answer, including a method of measuring it.
As an aside, I surprised my teachers by matriculating that year. My mid-year tests were peppered with 'F's reflecting a lack of effort.
Mathematicians: great lessons for kids! (Score:5, Insightful)
John Nash: Lesson: really, really, really crazy people win Nobel prizes.
Evariste Galois. Lesson: live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.
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Lesson: um... type your letters instead of writing?
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Crossover stuff (Score:1)
Heddy Lamar (sp?)
I like the Asimov suggestion.
Da Vinci
Bacon (not Kevin)
Franklin
Re:Crossover stuff (Score:1)
There are two possibilities, actually: Roger and Francis. Interestingly, both were English.
Suggestions (Score:2)
Richard Feynman (A definite must-have!!!!)
Paul Erdos
Alan Turing
Dmitri Mendeleev
Claude Shannon
John von Neumann
The Bernoulli family...
Emmy Noether (Score:1)
Euler is somebody that no one seems to learn much about, along with Gauss. Lots of 17th and 18th century scientists are relatively unknown apart from the theorems learned in secondary school, Hooke and Boyle come to mind. People like Huygens are also relatively unknown. Even someone like Newton, whose name is so well known, is not very well known outside of his scientific work, which only took up a small part of his life (o
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The fact that Noether was a woman in a somewhat rough time for woman scientists is easy to teach. And the accomplishments of a
a problem (Score:1)
You've got to include Tesla (Score:2)
Also, turing, babbage, ada lovelace, and aristotle are some interesting ones that you might not already have.
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Gene Shoemaker (Score:2)
Best known as one of the discoverers of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that hit Jupiter in 1994, but he did an incredible amount of other stuff as well. He was the first person to prove that craters on Earth and the Moon were caused by asteroid impacts, and he practically invented the field of Astrogeology. This all lead to him being heavily involved in developing scientific experiments for the Apollo missions, and training the astronauts to perform them - most likely he would've been sent to th
my suggestions (Score:2)
Kurt Godel
Gregor Mendel
Paul Erdos
Stanislaw Ulam
Alan Turing
John von Neumann
George Dantzig
Evariste Galois
Gene Ray (Score:2)
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (Score:3, Insightful)
So, even if it's not strictly a biography, you should consider buying it, anyway. Here, read the review on
George Gamow (Score:1)
For example: he predicted the strength of the cosmic microwave background about 20 years before it was actually observed and explained alpha decay of radioactive isotopes through quantum tunneling.
Interesting Scientists (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
George Washington Carver (Score:3, Insightful)
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http://www.answers.com/topic/george-washington-ca
Glenn Seaborg (Score:2)
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There is this one guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Science Bio suggestions (Score:1)
my nominees:
Madame Curie, Galielo, Copernicus, Tycho Brahae, Messier, John Wesley Powell, Roy Chapman Andrews, Hubbell, Michaelson & Morley, Lavoiser, Mendeleev, Werner Von Braun, Goddard, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington Carver, Admiral Hyman Rickover, Charles Darwin, Freud, Watt, Archimedes, Da Vinci, Amundsen, Peary, Lewis & Clark, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wilbur & Orville, Rudolph Diesel, Thomas Edison, Marconi
.
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science ... (Score:3, Informative)
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.]
Re:Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science . (Score:2)
I don't think any bright 5th-grader would have any trouble reading it. I haven't seen the 1980 version.
A couple of suggestions (Score:2)
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My two cents (Score:3, Insightful)
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science ... (Score:1)
Not strictly what the poster is asking for, as it's not a single, long biography, but I can't recommend highly enough Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology [amazon.com]. It's a thick, massively cross referenced volume with mini biographies of over 1500 scientists arranged chonologically from Imhotep to Stephen Hawking. Lengths range from a short paragraph to several pages (Galileo gets 4+ pages, for example).
As a teen, this book was a constant pleasure. I'd look up a single scientist and find
Nathan Stubblefield & John Keeley - 2 unusual (Score:1)
Rutherford and Franklin (Score:1)
Ernest Rutherford [nzedge.com] - A great scientist with several ground breaking discoveries, a national hero, and the mentor to numerous other Nobel Prize winners, such as Bohr, Geiger and Chadwick. Admired by Einstein.
Rosalind Franklin [wikipedia.org] A heartbreaking and inspiring story about a scientist that eschewed fame (and was cheated of it) but was instead dedicated to science for science sake and not the politics.
Arthur C. Clarke (Score:1)
Advantage of being one who is alive.
My Father (Score:2)
He was one of the fore runners in computational physics too.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (Score:1)
Edmund Halley (Score:2)
Of course, you can find Edmund Halley biographies in many places, but he's not really a common figure since the comet receded in the '80s. He's got a lot more to him than just that one comet discovery too. My favorite factoid is his estimate of Earth's age by the salt levels in the oceans. Being Newton's publisher and friend didn't hurt his reputation either.
Of course, I might be biased in this suggestion...
Graphic Novel^H^H^H^H^H Biographies (Score:1)
Hedy Lamarr (Score:2)
Maybe not quite a scientist, but at least the inventor of the incredibly important concept of "spread spectrum" communications.
And she was a hot chick. We need more hot chicks with brains.
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Glen Theodore Seaborg (Score:2)
Glen Seaborg, who at one time had the longest entry in Who's Who, was an accomplished scientist AND engineering manager. His team at Lawrence Berkeley Labs 'discovered' (created, really) elements 96 to 102. Born April 18th, 1912 in Ishpeming, Michigan, died several years ago in 1999. He was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Kennedy and helped negotiate the (mostly Atmospheric) Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1960 (?).
He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for their discoveries about transura
Astronomers! (Score:2)
More (Score:1)
Ada Lovelace
Grace Hopper
Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
George Washington Carver
Benjamin Banneker
Daniel Hale Williams
Elizabeth Blackwell
Rebecca Cole
Richard Feynman
Isaac Asimov
Leonardo DiVinci
Garrett Augustus Morgan
Norbert Rillieux
Thomas Edison
Ming Antu
One idea: encourage people to find scientists they can "identify" with. Show diversity, and that *everyone* can indeed be a scientist. My list is somewhat more geared at minorities, because most of the big names are well-known.
But thumbs u
What about imaginary scientists? (Score:1)
Socrates
Fermi
Max Plank
Goddard
and...
Daystorm
better yet teach them what science is: asking questions and getting more questions. like who is Daystorm? Well he is a fictional but very important part of an imaginary universe. What is an imaginary universe? It is a place where there are vulcans. What are vulcans? Vulcans are people with pointy ears and green blood. Why is their blood green? becuase instead of iron which makes our blood red, they have copper. (Somewhere alon
some good ones (Score:1)
Carl Gauss - I'm seriosuly trying hard to think of the last day I did not assume something was Gaussian...
Niels Bohr
Henrietta Swan Leavitt - add in a nice article on how the Cepheid calibration is absolutely vital to cosmology
Emmy Noether
Enrico Fermi
Grace Hopper
Glenn Seaborg - 10 elements - I think thats still a record and he worked on multiple Nuclear test ban treaties.
A couple of fun ones might be -
Margaret Thatcher - no I kid you not she helped make soft serve ice
Turing (Score:2)
Great book, though. It'd be nice to see some computer scientists represented in science curriculums along with the usual physicists, chemists and biologists.
What? (Score:2)
Nikola Tesla (Score:1)
Michio Kaku (Score:1)
Michio Kaku is a great scientist who has learned to communicate science fluently and interestingly to the layman. I'm sure he and his work would be very interesting to young people.
Hans Christian Ørsted (Score:2)
Or you could go back far enough that the "science" enters the realm of the absurd (to us, but reasonable enough at the time). People like Hippocrates [wikipedia.org] and Galen [wikipedia.org] could serve to illustrate how very, very far medical science has come. And at the same time,
David Unaipon (Score:1)
Maurice Wilkins (Score:1)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/019280667X/026- 7368813-0262849?v=glance&n=266239&s=gateway&v=glan ce/ [amazon.co.uk]
Biographies in simple english (Score:2)
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People [wikipedia.org]
Not many, but still some.
Some more scientists (Score:1)
1. Mikhail Lomonosov [wikipedia.org] which is the real polymath and has made significant contributions to science and art. Everyone should know him. The story of his life is also quite interesting and motivating for students.
2. Henri Poincaré [wikipedia.org] another 'universalist' - a great mathematician and physicist of the XX century and of
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Don't forget....... (Score:2)
How about Jane Goodall? (Score:2)
As for monolithic dead-tree biographies, not so much, but she's written a number of books and there's abundant information on the web.
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Luis Walter Alvarez (Score:2)
Lise Meitner (Score:1, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner [wikipedia.org]
Helped to invent Nuclear Physics but credit (and Nobel Prize) went a male. Her tombstone reads, "A physicist who never lost her humanity."
Another recommendation for Richard P. Feynman... (Score:1)
Biographies don't belong in a science curriculum (Score:2)
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I disagree 110%. Perhaps you think intelligent design should taught along with evolution? I mean not to troll, but to make a point. Those that would argue intelligent design is as much a 'fact' as evolution is fail to understand what science, and science eduction, are about.
Yes, we have facts. We should seek to discover these, and our students should learn these, but facts do not make science. Science is p
NONE! (Score:1)
What does a kid learn, if you give him a biography which is 90 % about
Suggestion (Score:2)
Emphasize Women (Score:2)
I've noticed that many of these fine suggestions are male. One of the biggest problems in my field of physics is that there is a very large gender imbalance. Perhaps we're sending a message early on that only men are good at science -- an absolutely false one. So, for instance, consider Marie Curie [wikipedia.org] and her daughter Irene.
Preferably, look for a treatment which doesn't portray the scientists as demigods; the dirty little secret that you find out after joining their ranks is that they're just as normal as eve
William Rowan Hamilton (Score:2)
Dmitri Mendeleev? (Score:2)
Mendeleev would make a nice point of departure for talking about basic chemistry. I don't know if there's an age-appropriate biography, though.
He's a great example of an integrative mind, and his accomplishments with the periodic table are a very cool example of being able to sift a seemingly confused and overwhelming set of known information in order to understand the world differently, more simply, and better.
As a human figure, too, he's interesting enough to maybe catch a kid's eye. Huge beard, stori
There are a few over here... (Score:2)
The discovery of anti-matter : the autobiography of Carl David Anderson, the youngest man to win the Nobel prize
Cockcroft and the atom
Atoms in the family My life with Enrico Fermi (by Laura Fermi)
Strong force : the story of physicist Shirley Ann Jackson
Living with nuclei : 50 years in the nuclear age, memoirs of a Japanese physicist
Lawrence and his laboratory : a history of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Schrèodinger, life and thoug
public library (Score:2)
It i
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As sarcastic as the parent poster is, I don't think he's entirely wrong. There's something to be said for teaching children that science is subject to perversion -- that scientists can be led into morally questionable activities. There are plenty of examples, and they don't all need to be as overtly hideous as Mengele.
Of course, given that these are fairly young children, I'd say that it's probably a bit early to throw this kind of information in their faces -- but you can gently approach the subject of "w
Not even vaguely accurate. (Score:2)