Lab Girl

This book inspired me to write. I love the way Jahren puts herself in the centre of the narrative linking the science and the scientist.

Whilst there are differences between how plants and humans respond to infections–pathogens are important for both. Thinking about cross-cutting principles across different disciplines often opens up new ideas.

This autobiography by a female geochemist and geobiologist describes her family background, education, and career, providing incisive commentary about her challenges in finding funding and pursuing scientific research in US universities.

I like the honest way she, a woman with a doctorate from a top university, portrayed the pros and cons of studying and doing science and the various ways her research assistant contributed to her projects, served as a sounding board, and helped her with all tasks, included cleaning up shards of glass after an explosion in her lab.

I discussed this book with women graduate students in science… show more.

This book made me want to go hug a tree. Hope Jahren’s love for her research in geobiology shines through and she makes the careful, detailed work of a scientist seem like an epic and wondrous quest.

Jahren's prose is as lush as the plant life she studies, vividly conveying the highs and lows of a life dedicated to science. Reading her reflections on friendship, health, and the demanding world of research is like taking a walk with her in a beautiful forest.

She manages to infuse the narrative with humor and warmth, creating a compelling story that transcends the… show more.

Lab Girl is not a history book but takes us back to pre-history while it simultaneously brings us close to the natural environment that we humans are a part of, but so often don’t notice.

Hope Jahren is a geobiologist; she studies ancient plant life by taking samples in bogs and glaciers. We get to know her life as a scientist with endless hours in the field and the lab and come to understand the meticulous work involved in understanding ancient environments and how to learn from those in ways that matter today.

Her personal story has given me new… show more.

Lab Girl imbues the practice of doing science with such personal joy and wonder that for anyone who’s involved with science or generally likes learning about plants, this is an irresistible read!

She layers her personal life beautifully with her scientific career, bringing in vivid and enchanting personalities. Science is often presented as objective and impersonal (out of necessity) so it was so refreshing to read a book that imbues findings so thoroughly with a personal passion and subjectivity. 

I like when memoirs are about something much bigger than the author.

Hope Jahren narrates her upbringing as a budding scientist and brings us inside a geobiologist’s lab, but the book really soars when she’s writing about “resurrection plants” and “monkeypods” and other obscure wonders of nature.

My agent gave me this book when I was plotting my own memoir, which takes on a vast universe of art. I was inspired by her urgent need to communicate her subject’s majesty. 

From the remote wilderness to the research lab, this book comes alive with the passion of discovering trees from a million years ago. For Hope Jahren and her fellow workers, the lab is a window into past millennia of climate change—and sheds light on the future. A leaf, a speck of soil, a shower of amber on your head; and then, the fascination of watching numbers on your instruments reveal secrets that you’re the first in the world to know. The joys of sampling soil, and of coaxing recalcitrant machines to work, come alive. And I love how Jahren manages… show more.