JF Ptak Science Books Post 2574
Prompted by an Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day post by my friend Carolyn Ogburn in which a word’s origin quote citation was by H.L. Mencken I decided to look around for others by the BoB (“Bard of Balmer” and author of multi-editions of The American Language). The online version of the OED has a lot search possibilities, including the search for author/quotation (which can be expanded by a year range), and so it occurred to me to have a quick look at the quotations used for scientists.
[The correct Francis Bacon, via wikipedia images]
My search was arbitrarily limited to one hour and outside of that was somewhat random though I did try to select folks who I thought might be more “quotable” or who could have contributed in significant ways to the English language in their work in general. It turns out in the 30-odd names I selected the person who was quoted the most was…Francis Bacon (3,509 citations). Oddly though when I checked out Roger Bacon I found absolutely nothing. It seemed to me that a classical figure like Aristotle might have a lot but it turns out for probably obvious hindsight reasons that this is not the case, as the old man weighed in at 204. Robert Boyle came in at 2670 which led me straight away to John Dalton, who came in at only 28, and then to Humphrey Davy (48), and finally to Joseph Priestly (with zero). Then came the generally very very busy and innovative/creative genius Robert Hooke (512), and of course the next logical step from there was Isaac Newton, who would be annoyed to learn that he was beaten here by his dreaded colleague (308). William Whewell (who introduced the word “scientist” had 473 entries, while Charles Darwin registered 1,311 (while Charles Lyell came in at 1034 and Alfred Russell Wallace at zero). The great founding partners of 19th century science came away with relatively not-many (Faraday at 349, Babbage at 155, and Clerk Maxwell at 183), all of whom were handily put away by John Tyndall (2025). The 20th century folks are mostly shadows and mist: Bethe, Feynman, Oppenheimer, and Gell-Mann come in at 0; A.A. Michelson (straddling the century) had 2, Hubble 8, Dirac 21, Bohr 22, Hawking 24, Rutherford 26, Penrose 30, Gamow 37, E.O. Wilson 52, Carl Sagan 62. Musicologist Alfred Einstein had 107 entries while Albert Einstein–oddly, perhaps, though he was not a native English speaker–had 13.
Female scientists get very little reaction from the OED editors. Rachel Carson leads the way, but not by very much and with very little: 14. Marie Curie comes up with 3 (I. Curie has 1 and P. has 2), and then, when I check out the long list of possibilities, no one gets any: Meitner, Apgar, McClintock, Herschel, Grace Hopper, Hypatia, and so on. I even checked out Ada Lovelace who arguably does not fit here but given her popularity I thought might show up with something, but there wasn’t a mention.
What does this mean? I don’t know, and I’m not sure that there is any useful takeaway from this–except the obvious conclusions that you reach when you consider the absence of women in quotation citations. It is understandable that Leonardo appears in only 4 quotations (not having much of a printed output and living in another language), and I think I can understand why Francis Bacon leads the way in this sample, probably because he slipped across so many different disciplines–but everything else may be a soft blended nothing, though it is interesting, like too much whipped cream on a Sundae.
[The incorrect Francis Bacon, via wikipedia images]
