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Alan Lightman, a theoretical physicist by training, teaches both physics and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His critically acclaimed novel Einstein's Dreams offers an imaginary tour of the young patent clerk's unconsciousness around the time he was publishing a remarkable set of papers that revolutionized physics. Also consider Lightman's novel Good Benito, which New Scientist says "captures the scientific mind-set to perfection."
2. Timescape
Gregory Benford is another professor of physics. His research interests include plasma turbulence theory. His novel Timescape shows why he has a reputation as a respected author of "hard" science fiction.
3. Contact
Carl Sagan was not appreciated by many of his fellow scientists despite his respectable and productive scientific career. His "popular" writing and frequent appearances on television earned him predictable disrespect from more retiring colleagues (who, ironically, are the source of frequent complaints about media coverage of science and scientists). Sagan has written excellent nonfiction for lay readers, and his novel Contact, with its female scientist protagonist, was also successful.
Marvin Minsky, coauthor with Harry Harrison of The Turing Option, is a prominent artificial intelligence expert at MIT. Their science-fiction mystery novel touches on many areas of science, including biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and bioethics.
David Brin, who has enjoyed remarkable success as a novelist, has a doctorate in space physics. He says the characters in his thoughtful science fiction, however, are more often concerned with medical or biological issues than with physics. This author of The Postman, a popular book if not a film, also wrote Startide Rising, among several other popular science fiction novels.
C.P. Snow was trained as a scientist, and used this training and background in a series of successful novels that explore the lives of scientists and public servants in the first half of this century. The one to start with is Strangers and Brothers, a title that has come to identify the series of interrelated works of fiction.
Cantor's Dilemma is by Stanford chemist Carl Djerassi. Djerassi earned his reputation for synthesizing the first steroid oral contraceptive. His first novel is an exploration of "Nobel fever," a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has worked in the lab of a prize contender. It is, one reviewer said, a disquieting novel that "should be read by everyone who wants to know how science really works." Djerassi does not avoid factors such as competition, back-stabbing, ego, and prejudice against women in modern science.
Biologist Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams tells the tale of a failed physician who ends up taking care of her demented father. A genetics paper he wrote long ago figures prominently in the plot, proving more relevant for the failed physician than any other paper she ever came across in the scientific literature.
9. The Dechronization of Sam Magruder
In The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson addressed the fantasies of his colleagues and manyreaders - fantasies of seeing living representatives of what are known today only as fossils. If you want to know what it might be like to travel back to the Cretaceous era, read this book, which was found among the author's papers after his death and published posthumously.
Now a half century old, the Mr. Tompkins series of books by Russian-American physicist George Gamow might not be a novel any more than Alice in Wonderland, but the books are nonetheless classic works of nonfiction that have no doubt led many readers into scientific careers. The fantasies recount the adventures of a bank clerk who travels into an atom and experiences firsthand the principles of atomic physics. They are still available as Mr. Tompkins in Paperback.
HMS Beagle contributors Alan Packer, Ed Voves, Dan Ferber, and Tim Tokaryk suggested titles for this list.
Dean A. Haycock is a journalist who writes science articles for many magazines and newspapers. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brown University.
Andrzej Krauze is an illustrator, poster maker, cartoonist, and painter who illustrates regularly for HMS Beagle, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Bookseller, and New Statesman.
