Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Contributor

BIOGRAPHY

Science writer. Author of Nobel Prize Women in Science, Prometheans in the Lab, The Theory That Would Not Die, and others.

Primary Contributions (4)

Articles

Understand how the concept of touch changes with the presence of electrons between two objects

electromagnetism

Electromagnetism, science of charge and of the forces and fields associated with charge. Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of electromagnetism. Electricity and magnetism were long thought to be separate forces. It was not until the 19th century that they were finally treated as interrelated…

magnetism

atom

electricity

Publications (3)

The Theory that Would Not Die How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, & Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy (2012)

By Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.

In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician...

Prometheans in the Lab Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World (2001)

By Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein and other great physicists and biologists are household names, but the great chemists have received little recognition. Yet it could be argued that chemistry, more than any other scientific discipline, has made the modern world possible, largely through products that we take for granted. In the style of the biology classic, The Microbe Hunters, acclaimed science writer Sharon Bertsch McGrayne tells the history of the chemical revolution through the lives of the men...

Nobel Prize Women in Science Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries: Second Edition (April 2001)

By Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Since 1901 there have been over three hundred recipients of the Nobel Prize in the sciences. Only ten of themâ€"about 3 percentâ€"have been women. Why? In this updated version of Nobel Prize Women in Science, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores the reasons for this astonishing disparity by examining the lives and achievements of fifteen women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel Prize - winning project. The book reveals the relentless discrimination these women...