Today, scientific biography is primarily thought of as a way of writing contextual history of science. But the genre has other functions as well. This article discusses seven kinds of ideal–typical subgenres of scientific biography. In addition to its mainstream function as an ancilla historiae, it is also frequently used to enrich the understanding of the individual construction of scientific knowledge, to promote the public engagement with science, and as a substitute for belles-lettres. Currently less acknowledged kinds of scientific biography (...) include its use as a medium for public and private, respectively, commemoration. Finally, the use of scientific biography as a research ethical genre, providing examples of ‘the good life in science’, is emphasized. (shrink)

This paper explores the special problems encountered by the biographer of a living scientific subject. In particular, it explores the complex of problems that emerges from the intense interpersonal dynamic involving issues of distance, privacy and trust. It also explores methodological problems having to do with oral history interviews and other supporting documentation. It draws on the personal experience of the author and the biographical subject of G. Ledyard Stebbins Jr., the botanist, geneticist and evolutionist. It also offers prescriptives and (...) recommendations for future research. (shrink)

In concluding his ‘Autobiographical notes’, Albert Einstein explained that the purpose of his exposition was to ‘show the reader how the efforts of a life hang together and why they have led to expectations of a definite form’. Einstein's remarks tell of a coherence between personal ‘strivings and searchings’ and scientific activity, which has all but vanished in the midst of the current trend of social constructivism in history of science. As Nancy Nersessian recently pointed out, in the process of (...) illuminating complex relationships between scientific activity and its social context, ‘socio-historical analysis has “black-boxed” the individual scientist’. Has the pendulum swung too far? In reaction to the preceding great-man hagiographie approach to the history of science, the social constructivists have largely ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’; consideration of individual scientists' personal approaches to science was unnecessarily expunged with the removal of ‘genius’ as an explanatory tool. (shrink)

Much writing on scientific biography focuses on the legitimacy and utility of this genre. In contrast, this essay discusses a variety of genre conventions and imperatives which continue to exert a powerful influence on the selection of biographical subjects, and to control the plot and structure of the ensuing biographies. These imperatives include the following: the plot templates of the Bildungsroman (the realistic novel of individual self-development), the life trajectories of Weberian ideal types, and the functional elements and personae of (...) the folkloric tale of the "hero's quest." The essay discusses the nature and application of these genre conventions in some detail, with the conclusion that biography, however useful, exerts a powerfully distorting influence on the image of how most science gets done. (shrink)

Résumé Claude Lévi-Strauss a souvent souligné l’importance que revêtait pour lui la découverte précoce du marxisme dont l’inspiration l’aurait ensuite constamment accompagné dans son travail d’anthropologue. Cette affirmation est devenue un leitmotiv des travaux consacrés à Lévi-Strauss, sans que personne ne se soit soucié d’en vérifier le bien-fondé. De nombreux indices attestent pourtant que Lévi-Strauss s’est livré à une mystification autobiographique. Afin d’en saisir la signification, l’article se propose de reconstituer le contexte du milieu intellectuel parisien des années 1950, lorsque (...) cette mystification a vu le jour, et d’expliquer les raisons qui ont poussé Lévi-Strauss à entretenir cette fiction encore une trentaine d’années plus tard. Le but de cet argument est de montrer que la ruse autobiographique habilement mise en scène, loin de n’être qu’un obstacle herméneutique, peut également devenir une ressource qui aide à lever le voile sur des pans oubliés de l’histoire. (shrink)

Dieser Bericht enthält zunächst eine Skizze der Entwicklung der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung in den USA und Canada. Sodann werden die Aktivitäten der History of Science Society of North America besonders vorgestellt. Schließlich betrachtet der Bericht besonders wichtige Publikationen im einzelnen. Im Anhang finden sich Übersichten über die jährlichen Versammlungen, eine vergleichende Statistik der Forschungsschwerpunkte der amerikanischen und internationalen Tätigkeit auf den einzelnen Gebieten sowie eine Liste der Forschungsstätten und der "Grading Programs".