Science By Those Who Made It Happen

The use of storytelling to enrich and diversify science curriculum has gained momentum in recent years. In the recent podcast discussion between Future Tense Fiction author Arula Ratnakar and Issues editor Mia Armstrong-López, they make the case for using fiction to “explore complex science and technology questions.” While fiction can indeed capture attention and provide a platform for understanding science, I’d like to point out that a rich trove exists in nonfiction—scientist memoirs and biographies—that can also bring science and technology questions to life, and has the added benefit of showing how science works in a given setting and how individuals come to participate in it.

So students might be fascinated to learn, for example, about the difficulties that the marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson had to overcome to transition from writing about the sea to composing the landmark book of the environmental movement, Silent Spring. They may be interested in the life of the geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, and how his fight to save seed varieties in Soviet Russia eventually led to his death in the gulag. Then there is the biography of Charles Darwin, who for the longest time had no ambition toward the serious study of science, only to fall in love with beetle collecting—leading to his fateful voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent,” Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in one of his Sherlock Holmes mysteries. “It would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.” Indeed, there is much in many scientists’ lives and experiences that would interest and enlighten students. When an opportunity presents itself for storytelling—either fiction or fact—teachers should incorporate it into their lessons and let students’ imaginations carry them into the world of science.

Joel I. Cohen