Writing about Lives in Science - (Auto)Biography, Gender, and Genre

Table of Contents

Body

Paola Govoni: Crafting Scientific (Auto).Biographies

I. Positioning Biography and Autobiography within the History of Science

II. The Trouble with Biography

III. Featuring Diversity

IV. Back to (Auto).Biography

Part I Between Biography and Autobiography

Evelyn Fox Keller: Pot-holes Everywhere: How (not) to Read my Biography of Barbara McClintock

I. Act One: Circa 1977

II. Act Two: Feminist Responses after the Nobel Prize

III. Act Three: The Scientific Community Responds to the Nobel Prize

Londa Schiebinger: Following the Story: From The Mind Has No Sex? to Gendered Innovations

Georgina Ferry: Telling Stories or Making History? Two Lives in X-ray Crystallography

I. Dorothy Hodgkin's Life and Work

II. The Biographical Process

III. Max Perutz

IV. The Reception of Scientific Biography

V. Science on Stage

VI. Conclusion

Part II Shaping Biographies

Marta Cavazza: The Biographies of Laura Bassi

I. Towards a Laura Bassi Metabiography?

II. Rhetorical Strategies

III. Appendix: Laura Bassi's Biographies

Paula Findlen: Listening to the Archives: Searching for the Eighteenth-Century Women of Science

I. Between the Archive and the Encyclopedia

II. The Biographer's Subjectivity

III. Observing the Biographer at Work

Massimo Mazzotti: Rethinking Scientific Biography: The Enlightenment of Maria Gaetana Agnesi

I. Scientific Biography as a Genre

II. The Enigma of Agnesi

III. Mysticism and Logic

IV. Conclusion

Part III Networking

Vita Fortunati: Mirror Shards: Conflicting Images between Marie Curie's Autobiography and her Biographies

I. Biographies, Biographers, and Biographees

II. The Case of Marie Curie

III. Between History and Fiction

Zelda Alice Franceschi: Women in the Field: Writing the History. Genealogies and Science in Margaret Mead's Autobiographical Writings

I. Margaret Mead: Autobiography and History of the Discipline

II. Her Mentor's Biography: An Anthropologist at Work (1959)

III. Conclusion

Paola Govoni: The Making of Italo Calvino: Women and Men in the `Two Cultures' Home Laboratory

I. The `Old Russian Writer': Olga Resnevic Signorelli

II. Signorina Beatrice Duval

III. Efisio Mameli, His `Uncle the Chemist'

IV. Anna Mannessier Mameli, His `Aunt the Chemist'

V. Eva Mameli: From Sardinia to Lombardy

VI. Mario Calvino, Agronomist and Traveler

VII. The Calvino Mamelis: In South America and Back to Fascist Italy

VIII. Conclusion

Pnina G. Abir-Am: Women Scientists of the 1970s: An Ego-Histoire of a Lost Generation

I. Prologue: How did I Come to Focus on this Trio of Women Scientists?

II. The First ever Team of Women Nobel Laureates: Elizabeth (Liz) Blackburn and Carol W. Greider

III. The Discrete Charm of `Ellen's Story': Why Historicize a `Scientist, Interrupted'?

IV. Conclusions

V. Appendix: Career Trajectories as Historical Data

Afterword

Zelda Alice Franceschi: On the Margins of the Margins: Awareness and Delay

Biographies and the Writing of Biographies

Contributors

Acknowledgments