Graphic Science: Seven Journeys of Discovery - Softcover

Overlooked, sidelined, excluded, discredited: key figures in scientific discovery come and take their bow in an alternative Nobel prize gallery. Much is known about scientists such as Darwin, Newton, and Einstein, but what about those with lesser-known names who have nevertheless contributed greatly to human knowledge? Celebrated author Darryl Cunningham draws compelling portraits of eight scientists who for reasons of gender, race, mental health, poverty - excessive wealth, even - have not won the recognition they deserve. Antoine Lavoiser : the father of French chemistry who gave oxygen its name, Lavoiser was a wealthy man who found himself on the wrong side of a revolution and paid the price with his life. The contribution to his work by his wife Marie-Anne Lavoisier is only now being fully recognised. Mary Anning : a poor, working-class woman who made her living fossil-hunting along the beach cliffs of southern England. Anning was excluded from the scientific community whilst wealthy male experts took credit for her discoveries. George Washington Carver : born a slave, Carver become one of the most prominent botanists of his time, as well as a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver devised over 100 products using one major ingredient the peanut. Alfred Wegener : a German meteorologist, balloonist and arctic explorer, his theory of continental drift was derided by other scientists and was only accepted into mainstream thinking after his death. He died in Greenland. Nikola Tesla : a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. A competitor of Edison, Tesla died in poverty despite his intellectual brilliance. Joyce Bell Burnell : a Northern Irish astrophysicist who discovered the first radio pulsars (supernova remnants) as a postgraduate student. Antony Hewish, her thesis supervisor, shared the Nobel Prize in physics while she was excluded. Fred Hoyle : an English astronomer whose controversial positions were often in direct opposition to prevailing theories, an approach that contributed to his being overlooked by the Nobel committee for his stellar nucleosynthesis work.