al-mofhariz

I spent some time teaching elementary school before heading back to grad school. One of the favorite games at our after-school program was "Guess Who"---the game where each play selects an individual card and then has to ask yes or no questions about the appearance of the person on the other player's card in order to figure out who that person is.

Guess Who came to mind when I saw the layout for this terrific and informative site giving biographies of black scientists in the U.S., hosted by the HistoryMakers. Just imagine that game, using biography instead of appearance:

Was your scientist inspired by reading Benjamin Banneker's biography as a child?
--Yes.
Was your scientist a particle physicist?
--Yes.
Did your scientist ever become a high-level administrator?
--Yes!

You're Shirley Ann Jackson!
--That's right.

In all seriousness, though. This is a nicely done site that students and scholars alike can enjoy if they are looking for reliable sources of biography for imp…

There's a new arrival on the scene and it looks promising for our crowd. The Bubble Chamber traces the thought lines (and decay paths?) of a handful of historians and philosophers of science at the University of Toronto.

Here at Americanscience, we aim to talk to a pretty limited audience. We want to build a community of professor historians of science as it has developed in and around the United States. Still, we applaud the Bubble Chamber's ambitions to create a Web equivalent to the public lecture series.