Characteristics of Biographies

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the characteristics that can be discerned in various biographies about people from different fields and different times in history. The paper looks at how biographers find ways of making an individual's area of expertise understandable to the reader so the achievement of the subject can be measured. The paper also shows how biographers find ways to link the life of the individual to the society that produced them as well as to how their field advanced because of the tenor of the times.

Outline:
Introduction
Science and Technology
Other Disciplines
Biographical Section
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Historians writing about figures in science and technology have the particular requirement of explaining the necessary scientific concepts so the lay reader will understand the scientific concepts involved and place them in the continuum of discoveries in the given field. Rosenberg (1996) notes some of this element when discussing the growing interest in science in America and suggests certain aspects of biography in the sciences. He also considers some of the proper uses of biography in learning about any subject, considering the nature of the individual life and what it might say about the larger subject in which it occurs. This discussion comes as part of Rosenberg's consideration of the scientist as actor in the larger drama of science, meaning the context in which the scientist develops his or her ideas."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Blum, E.D. (2006). Linking American women's history and environmental history: A preliminary historiography. Retrieved January 28, 2007 from http://www.h-net.org/~environ/historiography/uswomen.htm.
• Christie, J. (1993, July). Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist by Ronald R. Kline. Technology and Culture, Vol. 34, No. 3. 699-701.
• Clarke, R. (1973). Ellen Swallow: The Woman Who Founded Ecology. Chicago: Follet.
• Fitzpatrick, G.J. (1999, December 22). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self. Polity. Retrieved January 28, 2007 from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-61523737.html.
• Fouche, R. (2003). Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, & Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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