Fans pick 100 books like The Stargazer's Sister

I've always been inspired by the story of the Black women mathematicians at NASA — the "human computers" who calculated the formulas to launch rockets and astronauts into space. Shetterly's book brings them to life, making their feats even more remarkable, especially given their tools (adding machines, pencils, and slide rules) and challenges (they worked in the Jim Crow South).

The four amazing women the book focuses on—Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden—deserved to be brought to light. There's a movie version that conveys their brilliance in a dramatized way, but the book gets into depth in ways the movie can't. It's a great narrative about what it takes to be an innovator, no matter if you're a woman or a man.

This is one of my favourite novels about the imagined life of the 19th Century fossil enthusiast, Mary Anning.

Though poor and uneducated, Mary had a passion for dinosaur fossils, scouring the windswept Jurassic coast near Lyme Regis. She found fossils nobody else could, making discoveries that shook the scientific world. But science in the past was an almost entirely male-dominated arena, and Mary’s finds were effectively stolen from her, and she was ignored and forgotten in the scientific community.

Mary’s story is one of female hardship, endurance, and tenacity, and her contribution to our scientific knowledge deserves to be remembered. 

Although this book centers a fictional scientist rather than a real one, the emotions and passion that the protagonist, Katherine, experiences feel all too real.

As a lifelong fan of mathematics, I’ve often felt that math is one of the most maligned branches of science, so I adored the way that Chung portrays Katherine’s love for the subject and the beauty of a good equation. (You can really tell that she herself has experience in the field!)

I also loved the way that Chung delved into the difficulties Katherine experiences as a woman of color in science in the decades after WWII, from outright racism and misogyny to the kind of constant, low-grade doubt and lack of support that can make being a minority in STEM so difficult. 

Marie Benedict has written several novels now about overshadowed women in history, and this one might be my favorite.

Rosalind Franklin was the talented chemist whose experiments in X-ray crystallographic imaging were crucial to uncovering the double helix structure of DNA – a discovery, of course, long attributed exclusively to her former colleagues Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins.

Benedict does a fabulous job of portraying the difficulties Rosalind faces as a female scientist in this era, constantly disrespected by many of her male colleagues and denied formal recognition by the scientific establishment.

I was fascinated (if at times infuriated on Rosalind’s behalf!) by this book, and also enjoyed the insight into Rosalind’s life as a Jewish woman in Europe in the shadow of WWII. 

Denizens of the twenty-first century need to hop on board a time machine if they want to really see and comprehend the structure and workings of the world through nineteenth-century eyes. Making Stars Physical is just the ticket!  It pulls the modern reader back into an era when the science of astronomy was still mainly focused on tracking the movement of Earth's solar system companions against the array of carefully plotted background stars. It also reveals that, despite a public façade of stability and uniformity of purpose, astronomy's disciplinary boundaries were beginning to blur.

Author Stephen Case presents an engaging examination of the prehistory of astrophysics and the pivotal role played in it by polymath John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871), whose views reflected the complexity, strengths, and limitations of the state of contemporary astronomical knowledge. Although, like many of his contemporaries, he doubted that the chemists' trusted spectroscope would be… show more.

My astronomer kid self adored this book. My adult self was astonished by this accomplished work of nonfiction. Dual narratives take the stage on each page. First, the star that is trying so hard to be born, and second, the girl Cecilia Payne who tries so hard to understand the natural world. As the star goes through various phases, so does Cecilia, who longs to make scientific discoveries. Brilliantly told, the stories of the star and Cecilia parallel each other. I found myself going back and forth between them, marveling at inset pencil and walnut ink illustrations that never overpowered the text.

As a girl, I, too, loved natural science and wished this book had been published in my day. I might have been prepared to carve my way into a man’s world, as Cecilia did. Back matter fills in how stars are born—Cecilia’s discovery—plus a timeline of her amazing… show more.

I live in the world of words. This book plunged me delightfully into the world of images—photographs of distant galaxies and of artworks inspired by those photographs. The subject of the book is the pioneering astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, whose patient, painstaking scrutiny of astronomical photographs at Harvard 100 years ago led her to discover the patterns in the behavior of Cepheid variable stars that opened the doors to the mapping of the universe.

The author of the book is Anna Von Mertens, a visual artist working with charcoal and textiles who juxtaposes the story of Leavitt’s breakthrough, the work of other women like Leavitt at the Harvard College Observatory, the images that provided the foundation for Leavitt’s thinking, and Von Mertens’ own inspired riffs on those images.

The fascinating and moving story of the famous astronomer’s reluctant defense of his obstreperous mother, where not just his reputation but her life are at stake. We get an in-depth sense of how the combination of local animosities and popular superstitions gradually gather momentum over time until some tipping point brings them into the legal arena. I especially liked Rublack’s sympathetic portrayal of a famous scholar struggling with his own origins and sense of familial duty. A personal, family story, as early modern witchcraft cases often were. 

The engagingly told story of a modern hero who not only illuminated some of the darkest secrets of the universe, but who had to do it while fighting sexism all along the way. This is not a romanticized picture of a great scientist, but an inspiring and enraging telling of a real person living a recognizable life whose genius contributed to humanity and her unwavering moral compass and determination did the same for the culture.

While researching Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, I rented an apartment a few blocks from a house where Galileo lived in Florence. I could stand outside its door every day, but this book transported me inside—not just a building but a family, a home, and an era. 

Dava Sobel’s meticulous research reveals not just new dimensions of Galileo’s life and work as an intrepid scientist but the often hidden realm inhabited by his daughter. Illegitimate and unmarriageable, she entered a convent at age 13 to live in poverty and simplicity. And yet, as her letters demonstrate, Sister Marie Celeste’s soul and spirit soared. The ending—which I dare not spoil—has haunted me since my first reading decades ago.