• Book
• 406 pages
• University level

This 1995 biography of André-Marie Ampère is written by James R. Hofmann and published by Cambridge University Press.  Ampère conducted pioneering studies of electricity, among other things (the unit of electrical current, the “Ampere” or “Amp” is named in his honor). This biography treats his scientific work in considerable detail. Ampère was Catholic, and he both valued his faith and also struggled with it at times. From a journal entry by Ampère after his final conversion (or reversion) to Catholicism:

God has revealed to me what my eternal salvation depends upon. Could I ever forget it? Great Saint Joseph, to whose intercession above all I owe this grace, Saint Mary, mother of God, whose name I received at my baptism and to whom I also have this inexpressible gift, always intercede before God that he may conserve it for me and that I might make myself worthy of it!

From the publisher:

In this authoritative biography, James Hofmann examines the extraordinary life of André-Marie Ampère, who made original, significant contributions to mathematics and chemistry and is renowned for his new branch of physics – electrodynamics. A member of the Académie des Sciences, and professor at the École Polytechnique, his accomplishments are remarkable in view of his tragic personal life. One of the elite of early nineteenth-century Parisian science, yet having no formal education, he embraced the scientific optimism of the Enlightenment, and the Catholic faith. This combination of intellectual expectation and emotional spirituality made Ampère’s genius both destructive and extraordinarily creative. This, the only biography available in the English language, illuminates the scientific contributions of an individual and his epoch, and provides a fascinating insight into the workings of the scientific mind.

Click here for more information from the publisher, Cambridge University Press.

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• Book
• 128 pages
• General audiences (middle school and up)

This book by Colin Russel is part of the Oxford Portraits in Science series for young adults. The general editor of this series is Owen Gingerich, a historian of science with Harvard University, and an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It discusses the life and work of Michael Faraday, one of the more prominent physicists in the history of science. As the book’s title suggests, Faraday was a religious man.

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From the publisher, Oxford University Press:

Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the son of a blacksmith, described his education as “little more than the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at a common day-school.” Yet from such basics, he became one of the most prolific and wide-ranging experimental scientists who ever lived. As a bookbinder’s apprentice with a voracious appetite for learning, he read every book he got his hands on. In 1812 he attended a series of chemistry lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at London’s prestigious Royal Institution. He took copious and careful notes, and, in the hopes of landing a scientific job, bound them and sent them to the lecturer. Davy was impressed enough to hire the 21-year-old as a laboratory assistant.

In his first decade at the Institution, Faraday discovered benzene, isobutylene, and two chlorides of carbon. But despite these and other accomplishments in chemistry, he is chiefly remembered for his work in physics. In 1831 he proved that magnetism could generate an electric current, thereby establishing the field of electromagnetism and leading to the invention of the dynamo. In addition to his extraordinary scientific activities, Faraday was a leader in his church, whose faith and wish to serve guided him throughout his career. An engaging public speaker, he gave popular lectures on scientific subjects, and helped found a tradition of scientific education for children and laypeople that continues to this day.

Oxford Portraits in Science is an ongoing series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

• Book
• 336 pages
• High school level and above

This biography of Fr. Gregor Mendel was written by Hugo Iltis in the early twentieth century (the introductory letter is dated January 1924).  Iltis laments that the records Mendel left behind “were almost exclusively concerned with concrete facts… he never kept a diary, and his letters throw little light on the inner man”, so the biography is very factual in nature.  And, given the time that has passed since Iltis wrote this biography, parts of the book are dated.  Nevertheless, the book still provides a good in-depth look at Mendel’s life and his scientific work.  Mendel, an Augustinian monk, is of course known for his pioneering work in essentially founding the science of genetics, but Iltis’s work reveals other scientific interests as well—Mendel observed the sun telescopically, for example, and kept a record of sunspots.  The academic publisher Routledge issued a reprint of Iltis’s biography in 2018.  Regarding Life of Mendel, Routledge states:

First published in 1932. The widespread influence of Gregor Johann Mendel’s work and his own remarkable destiny combine to arouse interest in the personality and the life of this investigator who, little known in his lifetime, was one of the pioneers of science. This comprehensive biography of the life and work of Mendel will be of great interest to historians and scientists.

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• Book
• 264 pages
• High school level and above

This 1895 autobiography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Blackwell concludes her autobiography with the following:

It has become clear to me that our medical profession has not yet fully realised the special and weighty responsibility which rests upon it to watch over the cradle of the race ; to see that human beings are well born, well nourished, and well educated. The onward impulse to this great work would seem to be especially incumbent upon women physicians, who for the first time are beginning to realise the all-important character of parentage in its influence upon the adult as well as on the child — i.e. on the race.

To every woman, as well as to every man, the responsible function of parentage is delegated. Our nature is dwarfed or degraded if the growth which should be attained by the exercise of parentage, directly or potentially, be either avoided or
perverted.

The physician knows that the natural family group is the first essential element of a progressive society. The degeneration of that element by the degradation of either of its two essential factors, the man or the woman, begins the ruin of a State.

It is a source of deep gratitude in a long medical life to have been enabled by physiological knowledge, as well as experience, to perceive the true point of view from which the special nature of man and woman must be regarded. It is well worth the efforts of a lifetime to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on the root of all evil — viz. the deadly atheism which asserts that because forms of evil have always existed in society, therefore they must always exist; and that the attainment of a high ideal is a hopeless chimera.

The study of human nature by women as well as men commences that new and hopeful era of the intelligent co-operation of the sexes through which alone real progress can be attained and secured. We may look forward with hope to the future influence of Christian women physicians, when with sympathy and reverence guiding intellectual activity they learn to apply the vital principles of their Great Master to every method and practice of the healing art.

Though a Christian, and though she worked with Catholics on various occasions, Blackwell “blessed Heaven for the fact” that she was a Protestant, an view which shows forth periodically within the book.

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