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Scientists Biographies for 5th and 6th Graders?

Posted by Cliff on Wed Aug 16, 2006 08:55 PM
from the famous-geeks-both-dead-and-alive dept.
Education Science
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?"
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  • Greggor Mendel is a good one (Score:3, Informative)

    by CrazyJim1 (809850) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:02PM (#15924154) Journal
    Putting into a kid's mind that you could make a lifetime of selectively breeding plants for size and tastiness is a good thing.
    • 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.

  • Kurt Godel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by andrewman327 (635952) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:03PM (#15924161) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FleaPlus (6935) * on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:08PM (#15924183) Homepage Journal
    Here's some biographies of the less conventional scientists:

    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]
  • Murray Gell-Mann because he named his quark theory The Eightfold Way, which automatically makes him kick ass.

    If you don't know why Isaac Asimov kicks ass, you should be ashamed.
  • For no other good reason than to be the a member of the team that first "debugged" a computer by removal of the moth.

    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)

    by DeanPentcheff (103656) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:17PM (#15924231)
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg (729040) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:18PM (#15924236)
    Évariste Galois [ctc.edu] 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 [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?
    • Saw a show on PBS or History Channel or somesuch about him. It was about e=mc^2, and while it included a bit about the giants whose shoulders he stood on, it also included quite a bit about "A young Einstein. A rebellious, even a sexy Einstein."

      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
    • There are some biographies in simple English on wikipedia, if the main encyclopedia's articles are too far above the students' reading levels. (An example of a short one (there's probably better ones for more famous people): Nikola Tesla [wikipedia.org].)
      list of famous experiments [wikipedia.org] should give some names to investigate...

  • Mathematicians: great lessons for kids! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daniel Dvorkin (106857) * on Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:25PM (#15924269) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • My personal favorites (although I have no suggestions wether material exists about them which is acceptable for 5th/6th grade levels):


    Richard Feynman (A definite must-have!!!!)
    Paul Erdos
    Alan Turing
    Dmitri Mendeleev
    Claude Shannon
    John von Neumann
    The Bernoulli family...

  • It really shows how far you can go in life on pure unmitigated genius ;-)

    Also, turing, babbage, ada lovelace, and aristotle are some interesting ones that you might not already have.
  • Gene Shoemaker [wikipedia.org]

    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
  • It's a little heavy on the mathematician side, but all of these are heavy hitters who had interesting lives and careers. I've read biographies on most of them.

    Kurt Godel
    Gregor Mendel
    Paul Erdos
    Stanislaw Ulam
    Alan Turing
    John von Neumann
    George Dantzig
    Evariste Galois
  • Clearly, the misunderstood genius of our time.

  • Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (Score:3, Insightful)

    by artifex2004 (766107) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:09PM (#15924483) Journal
    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.

    So, even if it's not strictly a biography, you should consider buying it, anyway. Here, read the review on /. [slashdot.org]

  • Interesting Scientists (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dolohov (114209) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:13PM (#15924499)
    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)

  • George Washington Carver (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine (235196) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:17PM (#15924518) Homepage
    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.
    • Totally. I had a mini biography of him on my bookshelf for probably my entire childhood. That and Robert Goddard, another good one for this.
  • He discovered or helped discover 10 transuranium elements, won the Nobel Prize, chaired the Atomic Energy Commission (helping get the Limited Test Ban Treaty and Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty signed), and even transmuted lead into gold. A great combination of top-notch chemistry and good citizenship.

  • There is this one guy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chris_eineke (634570) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:23PM (#15924551) Homepage Journal
    Richard P. Feynman [wikipedia.org]. Read Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman [wikipedia.org] and you'll understand. :))

  • Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brett Johnson (649584) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:24PM (#15924554)
    Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology [amazon.com]

    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.]
    • This is a wonderful book. I have the 1970-something second edition. Pocket mini-bios of just about everyone loosely describable as having anything to do with science, from the dawn of history until the book was written. Fascinating stuff. (Like, why Giordano Bruno was really burned at the stake. Had next to nothing to do with that Earth going around the sun stuff.)

      I don't think any bright 5th-grader would have any trouble reading it. I haven't seen the 1980 version.
  • Well, nobody mentioned Levy yet ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Levy_(astronom e r) [wikipedia.org] ) but this guy's career really does illustrate what it means to do scientific investigation, globally if needed, and to stick to it, not give up if you don't get famous in 3 years. This guy found evidence of huge meteor craters on Earth that nobody else had found, proved that asteroids are a danger to humankind and not just a video game, and it took huge balls to stick it out and prove it. He was exemplary in his efforts
    • update: Then the Egyptian Eratosthenes, director of the Library in Alexandria, wedded observation to calculation. His idea was as simple as it was brilliant. When the sun was directly above Aswan, 500 miles away, he measured the shadow cast by a vertical tower in Alexandria. The rest was simple trigonometry. He calculated earth's diameter with only 16 percent error, and his method was used right down to modern times.

  • My two cents (Score:3, Insightful)

    by svunt (916464) on Wednesday August 16 2006, @10:38PM (#15924600) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • Even though he is not that famous but he is still a physicist that could be studied.
    He was one of the fore runners in computational physics too.

  • 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...

  • Hedy Lamarr [inventions.org]

    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.

  • 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
  • I can't believe no one has mentioned the Tycho Brahe [wikipedia.org], Kepler [wikipedia.org], Newton [wikipedia.org] story arc yet!
  • I would love to suggest Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Unfortunately, it's probably a bit heavy for elementary school students.

    Great book, though. It'd be nice to see some computer scientists represented in science curriculums along with the usual physicists, chemists and biologists.
  • No Robert Goddard yet? Rockets! And he got his start right around the same age as the kids. You could throw in Wernher von Braun for a counterpoint as well.
  • How about Hans Christian Ørsted [wikipedia.org]? It seems to me that kids will understand his significance well enough, if you remind them that every device electrical and electronic (from light bulbs to computers) owes its existence to his discovery of electromagnetism.

    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,
  • Here's some easily digestable biographies on Wikipedia's "simple english" branch:
    http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People [wikipedia.org] ... and more specifically, e.g. Physicists [wikipedia.org].

    Not many, but still some.
  • Neils Bohr. Not only was he a great scientist, but also an Olympic athlete. Cool guy.
  • Anyone with a sense of humor about Gary Larson's cartoon [janegoodall.org] is someone your students should be learning about.

    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.
  • Manhatten Project, stand-alone collision avoidance system for instrument flight rules, co-author (with his son) of the Alvarez Hypothesis for the K-T Extinction.
  • There are millions of more useful science-related things to be learning about, and universities are complaining that their intake of science students doesn't know enough science. Skip the fluffy stuff and teach them Feynman diagrams or special relativity - cool, mindbending physics that will get kids interested in science for its own sake. What we don't need is more of the cult-of-personality that surrounds many scientists. Science is fundamentally independent of people, this is something that often seems t
  • I would like to suggest Tracy Hickam... He works for Nasa... Not really a scientist but almost. You can easily put the movie based on him in the Library, its "October Sky"

  • 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

    • I would agree with the Noether suggestion, except I've no idea how to explain what she did to 5th and 6th graders. Lie algebras? Rings? Action principles in physics, and symmetries? By 5th or 6th grade, they'll have learned about conservation of energy. However, relating that (or some of the other conservation laws) to a symmetry in the action principle is a bit rough.

      The fact that Noether was a woman in a somewhat rough time for woman scientists is easy to teach. And the accomplishments of a

      • 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

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