Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne (born 1942) is a journalist, public speaker, and author of several nonfiction books dealing with scientific discoveries and biographical information about outstanding scientists. For her 1993 book Nobel Prize Women in Science, she received one of the ten Washington State Book Award Governor's Writers Awards in the state of Washington for 1995. Quotes She idolized Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie—"people who discovered things"—and devoured Science book popular science books like Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters. "Those books were so exciting," remembered Elion. "It was like reading a novel. It was a mystery story that they could solve, and they became people. They weren't just names." Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries 2nd, revised Carol Publishing Group 1998 9780806520254 https://books.google.com/books?id=bRsFL0xOMS4C&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=mystery 286 (451 pages; 1993 1st edition) Nicolas Leblanc#The Leblanc process Leblanc's discovery was turning the product into an everyday part of modern life. In the end, it revolutionized personal cleanliness and made washable clothing available to all. Cheap soap also prevented scabies, an itching disease almost forgotten by modern bathers. To lay its eggs, a minute human mite, Acarus humanus, burrows into the skin between the fingers, under the breasts, and on the penis, wrists, armpits, and inner thighs. The creatures cause exquisite, almost uncontrollable itching. Open sores form, fester, and can be fatal. Scabies was a major public health problem and packed the enormous hospitals of Paris, Vienna, and other large European cities. When the British government removed its soap tax in 1853, the price of soap dropped, and for the first time in centuries, the incidence of scabies plummeted. Soap, water, clean clothes, and body-covering lotions treated scabies effectively and also reduced the incidence of typhus ... Chapter 1: Soap and Nicolas Leblanc 1–14 Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World Sharon Bartsch McGrayne 2001 9780071407953 https://books.google.com/books?id=XS2QtX4fdQMC&q=acarus#v=snippet&q=acarus&f=false (243 pages; quote from pp. 13–14) On its face Bayes' theorem Bayes' rule is a simple, one-line theorem by updating our initial belief about something with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To it adherents, this an elegant statement about learning from experience. Generations of converts remember experiencing an almost religious epiphany as they fell under the spell of its inner logic. Opponents, meanwhile, regarded Bayes' rule as subjectivity run Amok syndrome amok. Preface and Notes to Readers The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, & Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controvery Yale University Press 2011 9780300175097 https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Theory_That_Would_Not_Die.html?id=_Kx5xVGuLRIC&pg=PR9 ix–xi (335 pages; quote from p. ix) Quotes about Sharon Bertsch McGrayne In Nobel Prize Women in Science Sharon Bertsch McGrayne has written brief biographies of 14 women who can be considered geniuses: nine Nobel laureates and five who arguably should also have gotten Nobel Prizes]. ...Her biographies are balanced and well researched. They are scientific biographies, but they are also rounded accounts of the women's lives, with due attention to the historical conditions in which they lived. The accounts of the science are remarkably accurate, and the book as a whole is very well written. ...There is much to be learned from McGrayne's biographies, and they are a pleasure to read. They are written with style and are the best of their genre I have read. ...This book is an important contribution because it helps us to understand that scientific genius can be found in both men and women, that those women who have contributed to scientific progress have done so in spite of daunting adversity and that they did have support from some men. In today's world, where conditions of work for women are better, we can expect that more of them will make great scientific discoveries, provided they get the support and recognition that is their due. This is not yet commonplace. Nina Byers, https://aip.brightspotcdn.com/PTO.v47.i7.63_1.online.pdf review of Nobel Prize Women in Science by Sharon Bartsch McGrayne Physics Today 47 7 63 10.1063/1.2808573 External links Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:Journalists from Seattle Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Women born in the 1940s Category:Women journalists from the United States