As a physicist, it is easy—very easy—to suffer from mild to severe imposter syndrome. Physics is full of brilliant people, often leading one to feel like the only person who doesn’t understand an otherwise “simple” idea that everyone else seems to have seamlessly mastered. I read these biographies as a cure for these bouts of doubt. For me, they often show how exhilarating is the joy of understanding a natural phenomenon; the reason we started doing physics in the first place. This simple joy often gets overlooked when you have to apply for your next postdoc position, next faculty position, or apply for grants. Also, these books show how developing any substantial idea can be very time-consuming, in no sense straightforward, and taxing.
This book is exceptionally well-written from both of these perspectives. Mary K. Gaillard is Berkeley's first tenured female faculty. Getting that position as a male physicist was not easy, as a female physicist it was close to impossible. She made it possible.
And yet the book's tone is not accusatory; she is not into the blame game. She never said anything about why she and her first husband were divorced; she simply said it was very personal and did not think it was relevant for the aspiring female physicists, her target audience. She also was brutally honest about many incidents that were demeaning to her in many ways; she frequently quoted big names saying those horrible things to her. But when she turned out to be wrong, she admitted. The frankness is admirable.
If you want to read a book about a physicist who did brilliant work, made her way through the jungle of academia to the top, and fought against daily, casual sexism from her colleagues, friends, and family members, and yet somehow managed not to hate them, read this book. You won't be disappointed.
A short and delightful book by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, a French Nobel laureate in Physics. He had a distinctive research style. He could, somehow, distill essential insights from complex physical phenomena, and then present them with minimal equations and clear, concise prose.
This particular book, however, is not about physics. It is written as fables about imaginary physicists navigating an all-too-real world. The stories are thought-provoking, controversial, and candid. Having spent a fair amount of time in academia, I know how true most of them are. I recommend it to anyone interested in the social dynamics of scientists.