This has been a very easy book to review because the author, a freelance writer, lays out clearly in the introduction his aims and methods, and the structure of the description of each bibliography. He then applies the method consistently over 736 books. The people covered are, in the main, pure scientists; engineers and agronomists are not included. In the section on medical sciences some very practical people, for example Florence Nightingale, are included. The first section deals with multidisciplinary sources: mainly encyclopedias and dictionaries, but also some series for younger readers. The sections on the major fields of science also start with works that discuss more than one person. For each item we are told if its main thrust is biography or science history, the readership level, whether one needs subject knowledge to understand the book and a bit about the scope of the work. The presence of photos, drawings, bibliographies and index are indicated and the number of pages stated.
Although the author suggests that you can find information by looking in the appropriate section, it is easier to use the index as the various books are listed under author and not subject. The index has major entries in bold, and minor ones in standard. The minor entries are cases where someone is mentioned, as an example from an encyclopedia, or have an incidental mention in the description of someone else’s biography.
Roger Smith describes the bibliography as comprehensive, rather than complete. The selection may be a little biased towards the United States, but on the whole it is reasonably representative. This book will be of use to historians of science, and to those building collections that cover the biographies of scientists in academic and public libraries. It will also be of use to enthusiastic readers of biographies.
Thinking over the various bibliographies and science histories, based around named people, that I have read, I realise that I have used these to find out about areas of science like mathematics and theoretical physics which I have not formally studied since I was 16. In those days if you studied science you received very little teaching in the arts, and so I have read biographies of composers, fiction authors and painters. This leads me to recommend biographies as a good way to understand the aims, working methods and excitements of an area of which one has little knowledge. If your gaps are in the sciences then Roger Smith has produced a good guide for you.
