Somewhat related to the theme of recent posts (here and here), let's look at a couple of scientific biography series from the two gigantic British academic presses, Cambridge and Oxford.
Cambridge University Press has a Cambridge Science Biographies series. At the time of writing, there are ten volumes listed in print on the website. These are serious biographies running into the hundreds of pages. There are three devoted to physicists: Galileo, Newton, and Ampere. There are three for chemists: Lavoisier, Humphry Davy, and Justus von Liebig. There are two for biologists: Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley. Rounding out the set are Henry More and Mary Somerville. I've always understood that Somerville was a mathematician, but the table of contents indicated she worked in physical and Earth sciences as well. Henry More was a name unfamiliar to me. Apparently he is primarily viewed as a philosopher, but he pursued experimental science as well, and was an influence on Newton. Since these are substantial biographies, I would imagine no attempt is made to cover all the major figures in science. Otherwise the choice of Ampere over Einstein would be most curious!
Oxford Portraits in Science are shorter biographies intended for young adult readers. At the time of writing I see 17 volumes in print. However, I own copies of the volumes on Faraday and Einstein, and they list additional volumes that may be out of print. I will include them here and group them collectively as follows:
Biologists & physiologists: Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Crick & Watson (a single volume covering both).
Chemists: Marie Curie, Linus Pauling.
Physicists & astronomers: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Ben Franklin, Faraday, Joseph Henry, Curie, Rutherford, Fermi, Einstein
Inventors and technologists: Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Babbage, Thomas A. Edison.
Behavioral scientists: Pavlov, Freud.
Anthropologists: Margaret Mead.
Paleontologists: Othniel Charles March & Edward Drinker Cope (a single volume covering both).
In the above accounting, I've included the Curie volume under both physics and chemistry; it could be argued that Rutherford should also be so counted.
Here, we might have a greater expectation than with the Cambridge Science Biographies, that the most important, or at least most interesting, scientists be included. However, none of the chemists in the Cambridge series appear in the Oxford series. The selection of biologists/physiologists is an excellent one, but could certainly be expanded further. Again I will focus mainly on the physicists/astronomers. The Oxford series has an excellent list - all of them are deserving. As I've stated before, volumes on Tesla and Feynman would probably sell as well, if only they existed. The inclusion of Franklin and Henry, American contributors to electromagnetic science, raises the question of why non-Americans in this field have not been included (such as Ampere, Oersted, and above all Maxwell). Again it seems to me that Niels Bohr might deserve a volume.
Finally, as a dessert for this discussion, what about Princeton University Press's "The Quotable..." series? These are books of quotations by various authors. Three scientists are included: Darwin, Einstein, and Feynman. Maybe you might consider Jung as a behavioral scientist. Others in the series include Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Soren Kierkegaard. I suppose this is the most subjective of all, since the person in question has to be very "quotable"!
