Review: They're alive

Living scientists appear in the Biographical Dictionary of Scientists
(Collins, pp 602, £25) for the first time in the fourth edition.
So you can now read about the complex mathematics that comprise the work
of Stephen Hawking (right) and a brief account of his life so far, as well
as biographies of the dead. The style is clear and concise, packing a remarkable
amount of information into a short space. For example, the entry on geneticist
Barbara McClintock, the discoverer of ‘jumping genes’ relates the difficulty
she faced as a young woman determined to enter higher education – and later
opposition to her discovery that genes could transfer their positions on
chromosomes, they were not permanently ‘strung together like beads on a
string’. She ceased to publish for many years. A later generation of biologists
appreciated her work, and she won a Nobel prize in 1983. This is an indispensable
reference offering swift insights into scientists’ lives.