Abstract

Please visit methagora to view and post comments on this article. This summer, whether traveling to a vacation destination or just taking a break to enjoy the sunshine, why not leave the research papers behind and instead bring along a good novel? Perhaps a story of a scientist, with some ethical dilemmas, romance or riveting plot twists thrown in for good measure, might be just the book you seek to sprawl out with on a hot summer day? Realistic scientist characters, especially biologists, at work at the bench are relatively rare in literature; scientists in fiction are usually reduced to one of several stereotypes.