Like much of history, scientific memoir is the domain of victors, researchers at their denouement reflecting on their rise to eminence. These are not the voices from the trenches, of scientists working, as so many do daily, to take the next logical step, to make the next discovery. And with few exceptions — Jane Goodall, Rita Levi-Montalcini — these have not been the stories of women. So what does the real work of science in the academy look like, the 99.9 percent that does not make the history books? You’ll find no truer answer to that question than Lab Girl (Knopf), a new memoir by A. Hope Jahren, a geobiology professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.

April 8, 2016 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education