Lab Girl

"Part memoir and part meditation on the natural world, this book is probably my favorite of the year — quite a statement from this fiction-obsessed reader. The writing is as lovely as the world around us, a world that author and geobiologist Hope Jahren is trying to get us to really see. You will be moved by the “lives” of the plants and trees she describes, as well as by Jahren’s own difficult journey as a woman in science."

"Scientific biographies most often focus on Great Famous Men—but most scientists reach neither fame nor glory. Lab Girl reminds us how the profession of the scientist has changed, how hard and unglamourous it is. In some senses, it is a book that annihilates with a single, first-person-punch the entire genre of biographies of luminaries such as Newton , Galileo and Einstein meant to glorify. Being a scientist is really very different for most people. Most of the biographical accounts have given us a deceptive view of the profession. Most biographies are rife with conjectures (usually implicit) about the respective influence of upbringing, innate psychology , and the broader environment. Yet we also now know that it is impossible to parse out these elements in fixed and abstract terms across all time and history. Nature and nurture have been taken to polarizing extremes that are commonly used to ascribe blame or take credit. For this reason, I love biographies that confront “life and work” in a way that problematizes those labels. They can not only help us realize that nature requires nurture and nurture nature, but to move beyond those tired questions to think about the emergence of the categories we use to organize knowledge more generally, and to choose ones that do not drive us into such impasses. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter To answer your second question: Can being a scientist be inherited? I am sure you mean it as a joke or provocation, but the history of science is rife with scientific dynasties which trace their lineage from great-great grandparents. This takes us back to your opening question of the interview: being a scientist today requires very specific credentials. anti-Trump, science-matters movements rightfully insist that scientific expertise belongs to those who hold those credentials. Many plots in scientific biographies hinge around the confrontation between ignorance and reason— think of the Galileo fable —but now is also a time to remember how dangerous those moments are when the learned look down on the lay."