The Grolier Library of Science Biographies

by Grolier Educational

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0717276260
• ISBN13: 9780717276264
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Grolier Educational Corporation
• Length: 10 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 12

Customer Reviews

Good set from Grolier's

After one has acquired one of the main general encyclopedias, such as the Britannica or the World Book, you can consider getting one of the more specialized ones. My favorite there is the van Nostrand Encyclopedia of Science, or the McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, but I also like the Encyclopedia Americana, which is even stronger on U.S. history and biography than the World Book, and this one focusing on scientific biography. It presents the biographies of 2000 important scientists, with the articles ranging from a few sentences to three pages in length. The writing is more approachable than the Britannica and is like the World Book, with the reading level set at about upper junior high or lower high school. The set is stronger on the physical and biological sciences than on social science, but that's to be expected. I note the School Library Journal review criticizes the set, saying, "However, coverage of pioneers in medicine, mathematics, anthropology, philosophy, and psychology is more limited." Well, for one thing, philosophy isn't science, and neither is mathematics, although of course much science uses math. However, science is basically what the scientific method does, and math doesn't do that. The mathematicians included in the set should only be ones who did work both in math and in science, people such as David Hilbert, Poincare, Bernoulli, Lagrange, von Neumann, Roger Penrose, etc. But the pure mathematicians should be left out. Sounds like this reviewer needs to read the set to find out what science is and isn't before writing the review, because it's a good set that covers what it should, in my humble opinion.

Cool for books i have absolutely no interest in

I loved these books because they gave you the facts- the hard straight facts. and believe me, when you have to do this for a math project, this is perfect, because it doesn't go on about useless information you don't care about anyway! like i said, horay for hard, straight, basic facts!