On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:45 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 5:04 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 1/7/2009 12:08:33 PM Pacific Standard Time, dgoodmanny@gmail.com writes:
unless the fame is very recent, there almost invariably will be peer-reviewed articles discussing both his life and his specific career, and of course they should be included.>>
I have serious doubts that this is the case. Hard-cover biographies are not "peer-reviewed" whatsoever. And, as in my last message, I would be interested in what journals can be found that are "peer-reviewed" that only submit biographies.
Hard cover bios from academic publishers are invariably peer reviewed, usually by three consultants, as well as the usually expert editorial staff. As for the use of popular biographies, one can be guided by the reviews for them.
I'm not aware of any peer-reviewed journals that publish only biographies, though most historical journals publish what amount to articles with major biographical content on individuals, some of t hem explicitly biographies. Similarly, journals in other fields often publish at least a few biographies of major figures in that field.
What you tend to get in peer-reviewed science journals is the obituaries (not that these are peer-reviewed in the sense that the science papers are). There has also been a change in the last 25 years or so from journals that included "society" matters, such as obituaries of fellows of <insert discipline> national society, and details of awards made by that society, and so on, to splitting the journals into a "proper" journal (for the science papers) and a "bulletin" for society news and obituaries and the like.
There are some journals that *do* specialise in biographical material, but not much that I know of. One that I am aware of is the one where the Royal Society publishes material on its fellows:
Official website is here:
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/120177/
Our article is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographical_Memoirs_of_Fellows_of_the_Royal_So...
More on this is here:
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=1728
The online version is here:
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=1724
An absolute goldmine for sourcing material in articles about Royal Society fellows (well, the dead ones, that is).
Many other major scientific societies also have similar resources.
For example, the Royal College of Surgeons of England has the following resource called "Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Online":
http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/home.htm
And for chemists, you have stuff like: "Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970"
http://www.open.ac.uk/ou5/Arts/chemists/index.htm
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Biographical material for scientists is out there and normally fairly easy to find, especially if an obituary was published in one of the leading journals, and failing that, one of the biographical databases will help.
Carcharoth