Who is YOUR favorite scientist in fiction, real or imaginged?
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged
professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the
orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs
the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically
valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie
Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and
intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife
Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own
quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship
develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront
the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your
best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.
Natural History by Andrea Barrett (not yet released, publishing September 13, 2022)
In these stories, “Barrett transforms deep knowledge of
history, science, and human nature into gorgeously vital and insightful stories
in which every element is richly brewed, mulled, and redolent.”
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact,
Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as
an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at
Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except
for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated
grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry
results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years
later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant
star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six.
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Widowed astrobiologist Theo enrolls his sensitive young son,
Robin, in an experimental therapy, involving decoded neurofeedback, leading to
fresh insights into the living world, science, popular culture, and politics.
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the
Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem
degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left
behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For
reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within
his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some
feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series
of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an
ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while
exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
Dr. Valery Kolkhanov, a biochemist and radiation expert
carefully concealing his queerness while incarcerated in a Siberian prison
labor camp, is abruptly taken to Kyshtym, a top-secret Soviet plutonium-producing
site where a 1957 nuclear waster explosion released more radiation than the
Chernobyl disaster.
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into
the insect-infested Amazon, she's forced to surrender herself to the lush but
forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former
mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a
valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and
sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness.
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Man-eating tigers, river dolphins, mangrove forest, and the
great cosmic metronome of sweeping tides all shape Sundarbans in the Bay of
Bengal, Where cetologist Piya Roy conducts arduous research.
Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Genius physics professor Dr. Jane Darlington desperately
wants a baby. But finding a father won't be easy. Jane's super-intelligence
made her feel like a freak when she was growing up, and she's determined to
spare her own child that suffering. Which means she must find someone very
special to father her child. Someone very . . . well . . .not intelligent. Cal
Bonner, the Chicago Stars legendary quarterback, seems like the perfect choice.
But his champion good looks and down-home ways are deceiving. Dr. Jane learns
too late that this good ol' boy is a lot smarter than he lets on—and he's not
about to be used and abandoned by a brainy schemer.
The Intangible by C. J. Washington
Amanda’s rare condition, pseudocyesis, is the perfect case
study for Patrick, a renowned scientist specializing in the little-understood psychological
disorders.
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
A fig tree brought from Cyprus to England is the heart of
Shafak’s politically and psychologically complex novel about the troubled marriage
between Kostas, a prominent Greek botanist and ecologist, and Defne, a Turkish
forensic archaeologist.
Little Gods by Meng Jin
Kiya’s birth during the Tiananmen Square Massacre marks her
father’s disappearance and the reversal of her mother Su Lan’s promising
trajectory as a gifted physicist.
The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict
In the tradition of Beatriz Williams and Paula McClain,
Marie Benedict's The Other Einstein offers us a window into a
brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous
shadow. This novel resurrects Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own
right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated.
Was she simply Einstein's sounding board, an assistant performing complex
mathematical equations? Or did she contribute something more?
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata
Orphaned Maxwell Moreau, whose mother was a brilliant
Dominican writer, becomes a famous theoretical physicist who receives a
mysterious old manuscript in Zapata’s keenly enchanting blend of history,
science, and fairy tale.
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
Inti Flynn, who has mirror-touch synesthesia, is a wolf
biologist in charge of a controversial effort to reintroduce wolves to the
Scottish Highlands.
A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason
The Characters in Mason’s mind-stretching historical short stories
include a mother seeking a remedy for sickness caused by London’s poisonous
fogs; a cruel, scientifically inclined Egyptian pharaoh; and the brilliant,
long-suffering naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
In the present, unemployed editor Willa Knox inherits a
wreck of a house with a history tied to Thatcher Greenwood, a nineteenth-century
high school science teacher whose job is imperiled by his teaching Darwin’s
theory of natural selection, and his neighbor, Mary Treat, a renowned
naturalist and popular-science writer who corresponds with Darwin.
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Young George Washington (“Wash”) Black is enslaved on a sugar
plantation in Barbados when he is chosen to assist with scientific experiments,
leading to a journey to the Arctic and Nova Scotia, where he meets the daughter
of an eminent zoologist.
The World to Come by Jim Shepard
Shepard writes remarkably intimate historical short stories
with a scientific bent, here dramatizing the doomed Arctic Franklin Expedition
and telling stories of hot-air balloonists and
a submarine crew.
(some titles gathered from an article on the topic in Booklist
magazine, August 2022, pg 32)
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