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Robert Boyle's character is often obscured by the shadow of Isaac Newton, but a masterful biography reveals him as larger than life, explains Peter Anstey.
Our enduring search for meaning in life explains the reverence with which the bones of seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes were worshipped, suggests Lisa Jardine.
Forty years after the publication of James Watson's The Double Helix, Georgina Ferry asks why the life stories of so few scientists make it into the bookshops.