Ask HN: Recommend biographies of lesser known fathers of science and technology? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommend biographies of lesser known fathers of science and technology?

7 pointsmindcrime7 comments

By now everyone has probably read one or more books on the life of Alan Turing or Richard Feynman or John Nash and a small number of other figures who were influential scientists. And I'm not even talking about the "big" names like Einstein.<p>But... there seems to be another group of folks, who never get much attention, but were probably just as influential and probably have interesting stories to hear. I'm thinking about folks like Claude Shannon, Herbert Simon, Norbert Weiner, Vannevar Bush, and others.<p>So, how about it HN? Does anybody have recommendations for good biographies of these, and other, important scientists, that we should all familiarize ourselves with?

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Just to seed the discussion a bit... I wrote a paper on Claude Shannon[1] in college, but I don't have a copy anywhere handy, nor do I recall what sources I used. But he is a fascinating character, and, as the father of Information Theory[2], has had a tremendous effect on pretty much every one of us. Put it this way... his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication[3] provides the theoretical basis behind pretty much all digital communication. I believe the term "bit" was actually introduced in that paper. So if bits and bytes mean anything to you, you owe a debt to Claude Shannon.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_E._Shannon

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commun...

I recently read Douglas Coupland's biography of Marshall McLuhan: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935633163/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

After having read some of McLuhan's work, which provides theories that explain much of the effect information technology continues to have on our society, this helped me understand much better where he is coming from and what his opinion was on what he saw in his time (which he omits in his work).

Mondo radical! That's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I'd never heard of McLuhan until now (or had forgotten him if I had) but from reading that summary of that book, I now see that he's someone I'd like to know more about.

Go ahead and read Understanding Media while you're at it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262631598/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... !

Incredibly insightful book, totally transformed my understanding of the world.

I've recently enjoyed a biography of Kristian Birkeland (http://www.amazon.com/The-Northern-Lights-Unlocked-Borealis/...).

Birkeland worked to find the source of the northern lights, but he sold other inventions in order to fund his research.

Here's a biography of Von Braun: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...

Von Braun was a chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and later on became one of the fathers of the U.S. space program. His accomplishments in space technology are mindboggling.

I enjoyed The Seashell on the Mountaintop,[1] a book about Nicolas Steno,[2] who many consider the father of geology. An unabridged audio version is available.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0525947086

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Steno

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