Continuing the parlor game from my last post, let's look at Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series, or VSIs, as well as its predecessor, the Past Masters series. In contrast to the multi-authored Cambridge Companions, the VSIs are short, pocket-sized introductions to subjects (including famous individuals) by typically a single author. However, like the Oxford Handbooks, the VSIs have respectable coverage of science topics, something the Cambridge Companions generally lack. Again, the usual suspects (Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Bertrand Russell) all have volumes dedicated to them - they all did work in mathematics or physics, though that work is not what secured them their places in this series. (Pascal's was a Past Masters that did not get transferred to the VSIs.) There are no VSIs for individuals who were primarily mathematicians.
Again, in biology only Darwin has a volume, and I see no chemists represented. Among physicists, we have Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Michael Faraday, and Niels Bohr. Strangely there is no VSI for Einstein! C'mon now!! By the same token, Cambridge Companions needs to catch up and issue volumes for Copernicus, Faraday, and Bohr. And any list of great physicists must include James Clerk Maxwell, though I do not know whether his influence on the humanities has been as great as the others mentioned here.
Turning to economics, there are VSIs for Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, and Lord Keynes, but Hayek is missing. (As Malthus is missing from the Cambridge Companions.) Past Masters had a single volume covering Smith, Malthus, and Keynes, but like Pascal's, this one did not get transferred to the VSIs.
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