American Men and Women of Science is a biographical reference on leading scientists in the United States and Canada published as a series of books and online by Gale, a unit of Cengage Learning.
The book was first compiled as American Men of Science by J. McKeen Cattell in 1906 and, as of 2010, the book has published 28 editions in its 104 year history. In 1971, its name was changed from American Men of Science to American Men and Women of Science. Recent Advisory Board members included includes James E. Bobick, Former Department Head, Science and Technology Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; K. Lee Lerner, Managing Director LernerMedia and Managing Partner Lerner & Lerner, LLC; and David A. Tyckoson, Associate Dean, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. The most recent editor was Andrea Kovacs Henderson.
A reviewer for Booklist described American Men and Women of Science as the "Cadillac of scientific biography". In 2010, WorldTrade Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences wrote that American Men and Women of Science "... remains without peer as a chronicle of scientific endeavor and achievement in the United States and Canada."
profiles living persons in the physical and biological fields, as well as public health scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists... Those included met the following criteria: (1) Distinguished achievement, by reason of experience, training or accomplishment, including contributions to literature, coupled with continuing activity in scientific work; or (2) Research activity of high quality in science as evidenced by publication in reputable scientific journals; or, (3) for those whose work cannot be published due to governmental or industrial security, research activity of high quality in science as evidenced by the judgment of the individual's peers; or (4) Attainment of a position of substantial responsibility requiring scientific training and experience.
Scientists who are not citizens of the United States or Canada are included if a significant portion of their work was performed in North America.
Famous quotes containing the words american, men, women and/or science:
“The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don’t seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it’s because we’re engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves ... as supplicants admitted to a shrine.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.... Commonly, if men want anything of me, it is only to know how many acres I make of their land,—since I am a surveyor,—or, at most, what trivial news I have burdened myself with. They never will go to law for my meat; they prefer the shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men’s attitude toward women and women’s passive acceptance of this attitude.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)