science autobiography assignment

Science autobiography

Science and thinking

As I look back at my science education, I realize that I really learned very little science in elementary school and high school. The fact that I studied science for approximately twelve years and brought away just a few bits of knowledge is amazing. How could I study science for that many years and learn hardly anything? The answer to this question lies in the way that I was taught to think about science.

The first science that I remember is studying the dinosaurs. This was in first or second grade. I cannot remember exactly what we did with the dinosaur lesson, but I do remember learning their names, although I could not tell you them today.

In third grade, we had a science textbook. I don’t remember what was in the book, but I do remember the teacher making us read it out loud in class. Everyone was expected to read one paragraph, and we went through the rows until we had finished the chapter. I hated this, because I was deathly afraid of reading out loud in class. Since I had this great fear, I would always county the paragraphs and the people in the rows ahead of me to figure out what paragraph that I would have to read. Then I would read it over and over in my head until it was my turn to read. Needless to say, I learned very little, if anything, about science, this way.

Probably the most frequent experience I had with science in elementary school was worksheets. We probably did a thousand of these worksheets, in which we had to fill in the blank with the appropriate word or short answer. The worksheets were quite easy and often I did not even have to read the chapter to do them. All I had to do was look through the chapter, and find the sentence that matched the sentence on the worksheet.

My first real learning of science took place in fourth grade. We were learning about the rainbow and our teacher taught us that we could use the mnemonic acronym Roy G. Biv to remember the colors in the rainbow. Still to this day I remember this, however, I don’t remember anything else we learned about the rainbow.

In sixth grade, I was required to be in our school’s science fair. Every year we had a different fair at our school (Art, Science, and the Talent Show). All fifth through seventh graders were required to participate in these fairs. I remember agonizing over what I should do for my project and thinking, “I don’t know anything about science, how can I possibly create a science project?” After much anxiety and with a little help from my sister, I decided to do a poster on the human ear. My sister helped me draw a picture of the ear and I also made note cards of all the parts of the ear and what they did. I won first place on this project; however, I’m not sure how much I really learned from it. I suppose that I did learn what the parts of the ear looked like, but I didn’t really learn what the parts of the ear did, because I simply copied this information from the books that I had.

When I think about this a little more, I realize that it reflects the way that I was taught to think about science. After countless worksheets and questions that required simply copying the answers from the book, I learned that this was the way to get good grades in science. However, I never learned how to critically think about science and really, I never learned how to “learn science.”

In seventh and eighth grade science was memorization. We were required to memorize all of the bones in the body and many other things. Science was not hard for me in seventh and eighth grade, because I learned how to play the game. I was good at memorization. I had been doing it since first grade; I could play that game. However, my memorization skills did not help me to retain knowledge. They also did not help me to think critically about science.

As I entered high school, I found that the focus on science was very much the same as it was in elementary school. If I memorized what the teacher wanted me to remember and completed the busy work, I would do fine.

As I look back over much of my experience with science, I can see why science was not especially interesting to me. I can also see why I didn’t learn much science in school. I simply never learned how to critically think about science.

Today, I am fighting the way I “think” about science. Even in college, I fall back into my old way of “learning.” It is just easier to memorize facts than actually learning the material, and sometimes it is the only way to study for a test because there is simply no time to really learn the material. This sounds terrible, but it is reality.

It seems that the real problem with my science education and perhaps the science education of many other students, is that I was never taught to think critically about science. Today we expect students to know more about science than ever before. However, if we don’t change the way that students think about science, then they may never learn any real science. We need to push students to think, only then will they really learn science.

From Student to Teacher

Just another weblog, my science autobiography.

My Passion for Science

School is all about finding your niche in life and discovering which classes you enjoy most. During the fourth grade, I was diagnosed with both dyslexia and exotropia. Basically, I would read letters and words backwards without recognizing it. My issue caused me to dislike reading because it took me triple the amount of time to read a book than all the other students in the class. It was then that I realized how much I loved science because of its visual component.  My passion for science comes from the real life situations, visual aids, hands-on activities, and the many teachers who have taught me to love the world of science.

It has always surprised me how much science actually related to our real life circumstances. For instance, my science class happened to be talking about rivers and flooding. That same weekend the Delaware River just happened to flood our town. It is intriguing being able to explain what was happening with the weather and feeling extremely intelligent in front of my parents. As I progressed through high school, I continued to use all the different information which I learned in class. Whether it was biology, chemistry, or environmental science, I was surprised how by relating the information I was taught to real world scenarios, it helped educate me to which things were most important to remember.

During high school, it was very clear to me that the use of visual aids and hands-on activities not only improved my learning, but drove my interest. I truly believe that science is one of the most visually oriented subjects which creates real life pictures and allows you to understand the concepts. Through the use of actual lab equipment, experiments, venn diagrams, charts, pictures, and flashcards, I have truly learned to love exploring science. Additionally, I benefit very well from the use of hands-on activities because it allows me to watch and focus on the topic we are learning about Chemistry is a great example when talking about visual aids and hands-on activates. After looking at the periodic table and where all the elements located, we experiment with many different elements to great someone new, sometimes even unknown. All these experiments and activities help me easily understand what is happening, rather than a teacher just lecturing information that is difficult to visualize.

I think a student’s education solely relies on both the student’s drive and teacher’s passion for teaching the subject. Luckily, I have been extremely fortunate to have been taught by such wonderful teachers throughout my science education. My teachers were able to make science interesting, entertaining, and easy to comprehend. During my six hour day at school, I would always look forward to science because it was my favorite class and I knew it would be fascinating. All of my past teachers, especially science, have inspired me to become a teacher and help the next generation of students grow to appreciate their education. In fact, I do not know where I would be without the motivational teachers with whom I have learned from during the last twelve years.

The portrayal of real life situations, visual aids, hands-in activities, along with inspirational teaching, has helped me acquire a huge love for both science and teaching. I have a strong desire to one day encourage other students to have a love for school and a passion to learn. It is so important to find out how students learn the best and how to keep their attention focused. Science is a subject where students have the ability to learn something new every day and can use the information outside of the classroom. I am completely devoted to giving students the same remarkable opportunity in education which I received.

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A Scientific Autobiography

• First Online: 14 December 2021

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• Hiroakira Ono 4  

Part of the book series: Outstanding Contributions to Logic ((OCTR,volume 23))

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This is a short autobiography consisting of personal recollections and experiences in my academic life. It starts from my student days, and covers the time at the end of the 1990s when substructural logics began to attract a lot of attention of various researchers.

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I would like to express many thanks to Tomasz Kowalski for his helpful comments on my early draft of the present article.

Russian logicians called extensions of intuitionistic logic, superintuitionistic logics . Thus, intermediate logics with inconsistent logic compose superintuitionistic logics in propositional case.

A review by Gentzen on the dissertation of my father can be seen in the book “Logic’s Lost Genius, The Life of Gerhard Gentzen” by E. Menzler-Trott, American Mathematical Society, 2008, p. 118.

As for Tarski’s visit to Japan, see also “Alfred Tarski, Life and Logic” by A.B. and S. Feferman, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 309.

By the way, S.-Y. Kuroda who proved that context-sensitive language is exactly equal to the language accepted by linear bounded automata was one of his sons.

In our good old days, it was not necessary to pay any attention to impact factors of journals.

Here, I always use the word “Russia” as a generic name for the country that was called the Soviet Union at the time. Of course, the Soviet Union included many other countries besides Russia, and I will refer to them by their proper names when appropriate.

Probably, this happened since we sent it to several logicians abroad, though I don’t remember to whom. A.V. Kuznetsov, a Russian logician, may have been among them. In fact, it was he who quoted our paper in his plenary talk “On superintuitionistic logics” at the 17th International Congress of Mathematicians held at Vancouver in 1974 (though as a matter of fact the paper was read by Yu.L. Ershov on behalf of Kuznetsov).

The name “pseudo-Boolean algebras” due to Rasiowa-Sikorski’s book prevailed at that time, instead of Heyting algebras.

Starting with this, I have learned a lot of things from Segerberg over years, not only on academic matters.

With deep empathy as a logician of his generation, I read M. Fitting’s article “A tribute to Professor Helena Rasiowa”, which is the foreword of the book “Logic at Work, Essays dedicated to the memory of Helena Rasiowa”, 1999, Physica-Verlag.

Classical logic is the single member of the first slice. Due to Maksimova’s result, each of the second slice and the \(\omega \) th slice (i.e. the infinite slice) contains exactly three logics with Craig’s interpolation.

We can see achievements in this direction e.g. G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell “A New Introduction to Modal Logic”, 1996, D.M. Gabbay, V. Shehtman, D. Skvortsov “Quantification in Nonclassical Logic I”, Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics 153, 2009, and R. Goldblatt “Quantifiers, Propositions and Identity, Admissible semantics for quantified modal and substructural logics”, Lecture Notes in Logic 38, 2011.

As a matter of fact, the basic operation is “difference” in Iseki’s original formulation of \(\mathbf{BCK}\) -algebras, while Komori took “implication”, the dual of difference, as its basic operation.

His paper, “Lattice operations in \(\mathbf{BCK}\) -algebras”, was published in Mathematica Japonica in 1984.

Later, van Benthem who was also there recommended me to read one of Bocheński’s books, “Ancient formal logic”, published in 1951.

One can read about his contributions and his life in an interesting memorial note by J. Perzanowski in Reports on Mathematical Logic, 1998.

I recall that when I visited Barcelona sometime in the middle of the 90s, J.M. Font pointed out to me that algebras which I was talking were called “residuated lattices”.

One can see the excellent contents of their talks in their lecture note.

In fact, I wrote a review of his paper in Mathematical Review at that time. Also, in a footnote of his paper, Maehara commented that he had announced the contents for the first time at a symposium to commemorate my father’s 80th birthday.

Acknowledgements

Tsutomu Hosoi has passed away on December 28th, 2020 at the age of 83. I owe him very much from the time when I started studying logic. I worked together with him in particular for the first 15 years in my research career, which was always pleasant, encouraging and unforgettable experience for me.

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Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Japan

Hiroakira Ono

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Department of Mathematics, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

Nikolaos Galatos

Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Kazushige Terui

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About this chapter

Ono, H. (2022). A Scientific Autobiography. In: Galatos, N., Terui, K. (eds) Hiroakira Ono on Substructural Logics. Outstanding Contributions to Logic, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76920-8_1

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5 Simple steps for writing an interesting biography report on a famous scientist

February 06, 2023 4 min read homeschool science homeschool science tips scientist

Learning about famous scientists can deepen our students' appreciation and understanding of science. And so it's important that we add a few biographies and reports on key scientists throughout their homeschooling years.

To help you out with this task, we wanted to share  5 easy steps for writing  a biography report on a famous scientist.

5 Easy steps for writing a scientist biography report

We love sharing about the key men and women in science with our students. We usually do this at different stages throughout their journey and this is something we incorporate into our programs. But typically, we recommend that students begin sharing scientist biography reports around third or fourth grade. In this beginning these will be super simple and they'll get more complex as the students get older. But they will all begin with...

Step 1: Choose and read

The first step for writing any scientist biography report is to have the students read about the scientist. 

You may have a book, or article, scheduled in your science program, but if  you don't have a book already scheduled for you with your science program, simply choose the scientist you would like to study and then head to your local library.  The children's literature section generally has a section for biographies, which makes it easy to find a book that will work for your student.

Here is a list of options we have used in the past:

• 100 Scientists who made history (This book has simple articles on a variety of scientists that are great for younger kids.)
• Science Stories Series by Beverly Birch (These are simple biographies also good for younger kids.)
• Who Was series by a variety of authors  (There are several scientists in this series, which is good for upper elementary and middle school kids.)
• Living History Library by Jeanne Benedick (There are several scientists in this series, which is good for middle school kids.)
• DK Biography Series (Again, there  are several scientists in this series, which is good for middle school  and high school kids.)
• DK Eyewitness: Great Scientists  (This book has simple articles on a variety of scientists that are great for older kids.)

Once you have your book or article selected, you can read the selection all in one shot or you can break it up over a week or so. If your students are younger, feel free to read the selection out loud. Just be sure to discuss what the students have read, or listened to, each day.

Looking for a unit already put together for you on a scientist? Here are two you can download for free: Mendel and Pasteur.

Step 2: Answers several questions

After the students finish reading the book or the article, have them answer a few questions about the book. 

These are the questions we like to ask:

• Who was the scientist you read about?
• When and where were they born?
• What was their major scientific contribution?
• List the events that surround their discovery.
• List some other interesting events in the scientist’s life.
• Why do you think that it is important to learn about this scientist?

Here is a free printable for you to use with your students as they answer these questions:

• Scientist Biography Questionnaire

If your students are younger, feel free to act as their scribe as they answer these questions. The plan is that these questions will serve as a basic outline or a list of facts to pick and choose from when the students go to write their actual reports.

Step 3: Write a rough draft

The day after you answer the questions, review the student's answers and talk about how to structure the report.  Your goal may be a simple one-paragraph report or it may be a several-page essay - this really depends upon the students' ages.

Here is a basic structure for a multi-paragraph report:

• One paragraph with the introduction and biographical information on the scientist,
• One paragraph on the scientist's major discovery and the events surrounding the discovery,
• One paragraph on some other events in the scientist's life,
• And a final paragraph that concludes the report and shares why someone should study the scientist.

You can reduce these topics to once sentence for a shorter report or expand them for a longer one.

Step 4: Edit

The day after, or a few days after, the students complete the third step, you need to have them edit their papers.

We read the whole draft together when editing because when we do it this way, my student usually picks up most of the errors on her own. Thus making the corrections hers instead of mine, which saves us quite a few tears. If we don't catch them all this way, I will point out any remaining errors and then we move on.

Then once we have finished editing, we will chat about the format for the final report. We typically give a few options for a scientist biography report.

• A mini-book
• A full-size poster
• Or a standard report 

If the students choose to do a mini-book, poster, or lapbook, we will also discuss what the layout of their final project will look like.

Step 5: Prepare the final report

After you finish editing and choosing a layout, the students should pull together their final reports. 

This step is fairly easy because of all the work you did in the previous four steps. Basically, the students will take their edited draft and put it in the format you decided upon.

You can choose to grade the report or share it with a group. Either way, your students will gain a deeper understanding of science through the men and women that have shaped the course of the subject through their discoveries!

The Final Product

Choose and read a scientist's biography, answer the questions, write the rough draft, edit, and prepare the final report.

That is how you can write a scientist biography report in five simple steps. Hopefully, you are now inspired to try writing one with your students!

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Home Numéros 43-44 Articles Scientific autobiography: some ch...

Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre

Cet article s’intéresse à une douzaine de récits autobiographiques écrits par des scientifiques et s’attache à en caractériser le genre. Il apparaît clairement qu’une lecture attentive de ces textes est riche en enseignements sur la façon dont la connaissance scientifique est créée, diffusée, recyclée, ainsi que sur les contextes au sein desquels ce processus a lieu. Les inclusions et les omissions de chacun de ces exemples de l’« écriture de soi » est le reflet des influences et processus sociaux qui opèrent lors de la production et l’application de la connaissance scientifique. On discerne également une tension permanente entre l’interprétation personnelle des évènements et l’avancement du projet de la communauté scientifique toute entière.

This article focuses on a dozen examples of autobiographical writing by scientists and attempts to characterise the genre. I argue that a careful reading of autobiographical texts reveals a great deal about the ways and the contexts in which scientific knowledge is created, popularised, and recycled. The material included and omitted in each of these examples of life writing reflects the social influences and processes at work in the production and application of scientific knowledge. A permanent tension between self-promotion, personal interpretation and the furtherance of the project of the scientific community as a whole is also evident.

Index terms

Mots-clés : , keywords: , 1. why study scientific autobiography.

1 In his introduction to La Vie de laboratoire, Bruno Latour is dismissive of accounts of the practices of the scientific community found in the writing of scientists themselves. For him, their works lack inquiry, direct observation and contradiction:

1  This passage is not part of the original English version of Laboratory Life .

Pour donner un peu d’indépendance aux analyses de la science, il est donc nécessaire de ne pas se reposer uniquement sur ce que les savants et chercheurs disent d’eux-mêmes. Ils doivent devenir ce que l’ethnologie nomme un « informateur », un informateur certes privilégié, mais enfin un informateur dont on doute. (Latour 1996: 17) 1

2 Certainly, Latour is defending his own position as the non-participant observer of the scientific process, but his final analysis is inevitably just as unreliable as that of the participant-analyst he relegates to the position of a mere ethnologist’s “informer”. Scientists are rarely dupes: many have a better working knowledge of current theories in the sociology of science than do sociologists or indeed linguists of the basics of science. When they write about what they do – as autoethnologists – they do so in the full knowledge that their version is not the only possible version. Indeed, it is the very unreliability – the subjectivity – of autobiographical writing that makes it worth examining more closely.

3 In a study of Darwin and the genre of biography, Robert M. Young has argued that biography does not merely fill in the “background” of the scientist’s life, but also provides “the materials that take us to the centre of the scientific enterprise”:

Looking at the way this genre chooses to see great artists and scientists reveals perhaps more clearly than the original works themselves how implicated in the culture of its time each work is. Biography historicizes. Its language can make no pretense to the timelessness too often attributed to both art and science. Watching how biography actually approaches a writer can tell us a great deal not only about how science reflects its own historical moment, its own personal sources, but about how much our understanding of and our esteem for science are determined by the culture of the moment. (Young 1987: 203)

4 Similarly, a careful reading of autobiographical documents – their narrative arguments, their inclusions and omissions, their use of language – can teach us a great deal about the ways and the contexts in which scientific knowledge is created, popularized, and recycled. Consider, for instance, the following anecdote recounted by Jon Beckwith in his autobiography Making Genes, Making Waves . Beckwith and his co-workers obtained mutations on the E. coli chromosome that were important for studying the mechanism of membrane protein insertion. This work was in some ways the result of ten years of research on other projects that had included Beckwith serendipitously discovering a whole new area of biology, taking some wrong turns and having some lucky breaks. When the time came for Beckwith’s colleague Hong-Ping to write the research up, they decided to tell the whole tortuous history of the project beginning with the words “This is the story…”. They knew that this was not the accepted way of presenting scientific research, but they believed that recounting the entire course of events would be enlightening for others. The manuscript was submitted to two journals and it was rejected by both. The reviewers felt that the paper read more like a personal memoir than a formal presentation. Beckwith defends his choice in these words:

I had come to see how the scientific process is idealized by its portrayal in school texts and by the image of it purveyed by the media. For those university students who enter scientific careers, the mode of presenting research in scientific journals further strengthens the myth of pure objective science. (2002: 185-186)

He continues:

Yet interesting scientific discoveries are rarely the product of such a linear process. The misrepresentation of the workings of science leaves out the human element, the wrong turns, the surprises, the flashes of intuition, even the passions that drive us in science. It also fails to acknowledge the biases, the assumptions that we all must start with in order to proceed in a scientific investigation. (Beckwith 2002:186)

5 Peri-professional writing, and in particular autobiography, offers us access to these elements in a way that professional texts cannot.

2. A brief typology

6 The works in the mini corpus of autobiographical writing chosen for the purposes of this article show clearly that the field of what I have loosely called scientific autobiography is, in fact, heterogeneous.

Beckwith, Jon. 2002. Making Genes, Making Waves. A Social Activist in Science .

Biro, David. 2000. One Hundred Days. My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient .

Bonner, John Tyler. 2002. Lives of a Biologist, Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science .

Feynman, Richard P. 1985. “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character .

Gawande, Atul. 2002. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science .

Kingsolver, Barbara. 1995. High Tide in Tuscon .

Nurse, Paul. Sir Paul Nurse – Autobiography (Official Nobel Foundation web site).

Verghese, Abraham. 1995. My Own Country. A Doctor’s Story .

Watson, James D. 1968 The Double Helix. A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA .

Watson, James D. 2001. Genes, Girls and Gamow .

Williams, William Carlos. 1948. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams .

7 In this short list there are non-exclusive, overlapping examples of a memoir documenting a double life in science and in social activism (Beckwith); an autopathography written by a doctor suffering from paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (Biro);a book combining autobiography and the history of biology (Bonner) , a collaborative life narrative in the form ofa series of stories culled from taped conversations and then set down on paper (Feynman); a collection of creative nonfiction essays by a trainee surgeon inspired and illustrated by confessional autobiographical detail (Gawande); a similar collection by a “trained biologist” who abandoned science for writing and which might be described as eco/autobiography because the emphasis is often on the mutual influences of person and place (Kingsolver); a short autobiographical note for the official Nobel Foundation web site (Nurse); an auto/biography combining the story of a physician in Tennessee with that of his AIDS patients, a book which might also be considered autothanatography since most of those patients died during the period covered (Verghese); a memoir of a specific period and a specific discovery, that of the helical structure of DNA, undoubtedly one of the canonical works of this genre (Watson, 1968), and its disappointing sequel (Watson, 2001), and a literary life narrative by someone who managed to combine medicine and a highly successful literary career (Williams). Needless to say, this typology is far from exhaustive.

3. Why do scientists write autobiography?

• 2  There are, of course, important differences between the lives and professional activities of those (...)

8 Writing about oneself is clearly not undertaken lightly and the scientist 2 who does so often considers the result an important piece of work. During an interview in Time magazine marking the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix, James Watson was asked “What’s your second greatest achievement?” He replied, “Writing The Double Helix . I think the book will last. No one else could have written it” (2003: 44).

9 The motivations for self-representation in writing are myriad. At the very simplest level we might say that scientists write because they have a good story to tell.Watson, for example, knew that the manner in which he and Crick had arrived at their proposed structure for DNA – the double helix – would make a great story. Lawrence Bragg writes in the introduction it is “drama of the highest order; the tension mounts and mounts towards the final climax” (Watson 1968: 9). Others write through a desire to set the record straight:FrancisCrick, for example, produced What Mad Pursuit in response to Watson’s book. The aim of scientific autobiographers may also be to make priority claims and gain recognition and prestige both inside and outside the scientific community.

10 Pondering a similar question, Greg Myers examines the motivations of scientists who write for popular journals, a seemingly futile occupation when all the professional rewards are for articles in professional journals. Why then do they spend valuable time on these apparently less rewarding productions?

• 3  The fee for writing in popular journals may be relatively small but successful books can be real m (...)

Not for the money; the fee is small […]. They don’t get rewarded with citations either; these journals are not usually places for first reports or findings, and they do not allow for extensive review or theoretical development. But there is clearly prestige within the research community attached to being asked to speak for one’s field, and there is the chance to address a broad audience that includes many researchers and administrators in related fields who would not ordinarily read one’s work in specialist journals. (Myers 1990: 145) 3

4  Cf. Myers (1990: 247-248) on the subject of grant proposals and the rhetoric of self-presentation.

11 Autobiographical writing can be considered part of what Latour calls the accreditation system. Credibility is created and accumulated through formal autobiography just as it is through that other form of life writing essential in grant proposals, the CV. 4 This pursuit of recognition through autobiographical writing can be phenomenally successful as Steve Jones declares in his introduction to The Double Helix: “Everyone knows about viruses, or the background radiation of the big bang, but almost nobody could name the individuals who discovered them. DNA is different and this book is the reason why” (Watson 1968: i). Self-representation can therefore be seen as an operation in persuasion, the objective being to make readers appreciate the contribution made by the author’s own work to the important ongoing project of science.

12 The autobiography may also serve to restate a scientific claim. Woolgar analyses the Nobel address of an astrophysicist and claims that “the events have to be redefined as a discovery in each new text, so that a late text does work just as the first publication did. [… I]t is not unusual for a scientist to have an occasion to present a scientific claim in terms of a narrative of his or her career” (Woolgarcited by Myers [1990: 27]).

13 The declared objective of the autobiographical project is often to promote the public understanding of science and therefore, less explicitly, to further the cause of the scientific community as a whole, “Although such [works] may not directly advance the career of the individual writer, they are essential to the survival of the discipline, dependent as it is on public support for research” (Myers 1990: 145). In a commentary on The Double Helix , Edward Yoxen argues that Watson went beyond the conventional limits of popularisation to convey the experience of carrying out a new style of scientific research based on competition. He claims that Watson’s express intention was to challenge the received account of scientific research:

Speaking from a high-level plateau of scientific achievement, he set out didactically to create a new image of a scientific dedication in an age of highly competitive endeavour when one’s own lapses could lose one the race. It was his way of telling people how to take science seriously and how to conduct oneself within a set of norms that took competition as a basic fact of life. (Yoxen 1985: 179)

14 Paradoxically scientific autobiographers also write to assert their singularity . As regards the scientific community, their message often seems to be double: “I am one of them; a respected member of the tribe, but I’m not like them”. Creative writing materialises that difference. In the words of Claude Bernard , “ L ’ art, c ’ est moi; la science, c ’ est nous ” ( In Beer 1987: 39).

15 Some of these motivations will be examined in more detail when we look at the characteristics of the genre.

4. Who reads scientific autobiographies?

• 5  Young condemns this blind belief in the wisdom of scientists: “They can pronounce with the authori (...)

16 Readers appear to respect what scientists have to say in a way that they do not necessarily respect the pronouncements of other categories of expert. 5 Presumably they are interested in the personality behind the scientific process or the application of scientific knowledge, perhaps they are interested in the idea and the story of its genesis, keen to know more about the story behind the story, the face behind the concept. They may be flattered by the illusion of a privileged one-to-one encounter with scientific and medical authority or seduced by the promise of a confidential, conversational tone; the prospect of entertaining anecdotes and inside information, the taking off of the white coat, but the reassurance that it is hanging on a hook somewhere there in the background. They want to be entertained but they also want access to a sort of power – the power of scientific knowledge – and they want it wrapped up in a more attractive package than the research article.

• 6  In fact, increasingly, the blurb is not only on the back of the book but on the front cover, spraw (...)

17 The blurb on the back of the books, 6 that paratext par excellence , the hook calculated to incite readers to part with their money, throws some light on what publishers believe readers of scientific autobiography to be interested in. Here are a few examples: “Like nothing else in literature, it gives one the feel of how creative science really happens” (C. P. Snow on The Double Helix ); “[A] story told from the closely observed heat of an epidemic. Far from being a sociological discourse, it is intensely personal; Dr Verghese’s vulnerability and his lucid prose give this book the emotional momentum of a good novel” (John Irving on My Own Country ); “a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age” ( Surely You ’ re Joking Mr Feynman ); “It is the story of a doctor with the heart of a poet” ( The New York Times Book Review on One Hundred Days ); “an unflinching view from the scalpel’s edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made” ( Complications ); “With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet […]” ( High Tide in Tucson ).

18 There are also celebrity endorsements of the quality of the writing: Bill Bryson declares, “I don’t know if Atul Gawande was born to be a surgeon – I very much suspect so – but he was certainly born to write.” Verghese is even compared to Conrad and Nabokov. As the advertising pitch shows, several double competencies are required of scientist-autobiographers: scientific authority but quality writing too; the thrill of the novel with the stamp of approved science. Authors must be both credible scientists and accomplished stylists; credible describers of the mysteries of the scientific world but also adept at demystification. They must have proven professional skill and knowledge and interesting personal lives too.

19 Who reads scientific autobiography? Probably much the same sort of person as reads popular science: both non-scientists and scientists. In a review of One Hundred Days in the medical press, one doctor reviewer gives a brief history of autopathography by doctors and concludes that “Clinicians are fascinated by the genre – perhaps because they are intrigued, if not intimidated, by role reversal, a frustrating if enlightening movement from active to passive” (Duffin 2000: 1857). But what interests the lay reader is not necessarily what interests the clinician in this case. The reviewer continues:

[Biro’s] tale is interspersed with lucid explanations of bone marrow function and T-cell depleted transplantation, useful to anyone facing this procedure. But these explanations interrupt the personal tale of unusual family dynamics, which is, for me, much more compelling. (Duffin 2000: 1857)

20 Whereas this doctor-reviewer at least reads not for the science but for the human element, the lay reader is generally more interested in the scientific than the human. Myers claims: “different audiences get different narratives, and different narratives carry different views of the work of science” (Myers 1990: 248). Autobiography, it would appear, carries many closely intertwined narratives directed at a variety of readers with a wide range of motivations.

5. Some characteristics of the genre(s)

21 Given the heterogeneity mentioned earlier, we can rarely talk about a characteristic common to all scientific autobiographical writing. Certain general traits do, however, appear to tie together those under study in the present article albeit in a loose bundle.

22 The first of these is a declaration of honest intent and the assurance of professional integrity.Each of these documents is framed in what Philippe Lejeune (1975) has called the “autobiographical pact” – an implicit contract between reader and writer. The autobiographical pact, the contract of identity, is sealed primarily in the proper name: the author’s name is identical to that of the narrator and we consequently read the text written by the author to whom it refers as reflexive or autobiographical. For Lejeune, this is fundamental:

Dans ce travail, j’étais guidé par quelque chose d’essentiel : la récurrence obstinée d’un certain type de discours adressé au lecteur, ce que j’ai appelé le « pacte autobiographique ». Très vite, je me suis mis à faire une anthologie de ces préambules propitiatoires, de ces serments, de ces appels au peuple, avec l’impression qu’ils disaient déjà tout ce que je pourrais dire ! Ce discours contenait fatalement sa propre vérité : il n’était pas une simple assertion, mais un acte de langage, un performatif (je ne connaissais pas encore l’expression), qui faisait ce qu’il disait. C’était une promesse. En y croyant je n’étais pas une dupe, ou un ethnologue naïf qui croit à la vérité littérale des légendes que les indigènes lui racontent, j’étais dans la vérité de cette magie ! (Lejeune: web page)

23 This passage, taken from an autobiographical text on Lejeune’s “autopacte” website, is in the past tense because he later reformulated his theory, believing that it wasn’t so much a pact, which supposes that the reader too is promising something, but more of a unilateral engagement on the part of the writer. He has now reconsidered that rectification and thinks that perhaps he wasn’t mistaken after all.

24 Because of the autobiographical pact, the reader assesses the narrative in ways that are suspended in fictional forms of literature. The autobiographical pact is also embedded in dedications to people whose names also appear in the narrative (Verghese), in assurances that “these stories are true” (Gawande), in claims that extensive use has been made of contemporary letters to date events (Watson), in admissions that some people will not be happy with the book, and perhaps paradoxically in declarations that “all names, certain identifying characteristics and temporal events have been changed” (Verghese). It may also be expressed in the title – Watson’s working title for the Double Helix was Honest Jim . Others have included the words “surgeon” or “doctor” in their subtitles.

25 The concept of an autobiographical pact is still more complex and interesting when applied to scientific autobiography since the implied contract demands not only the honesty of the individual in being who s/he says s/he is when recounting past events and experiences but also his or her scientific credibility: the guarantee that the science is accurate. Consequently, assurances of scientific credibility are also to be found in the paratext; in prefaces, synopses, vitals and author’s notes. Even in those of Barbara Kingsolver, a modest ex-student of biology where we are assured that “Barbara Kingsolver was trained as a biologist before becoming a writer”, that she is indebted to the editors of Natural History who invited her “back from poetics to science”, and by protestations that if it hadn’t been for the encouragement of her literary agent she would still be “labouring in a cubicle as a technical writer, and that’s the truth” (Kingsolver 1995: x-xi). These disclosures all serve to establish the author’s scientific credibility and legitimise her right to write about scientific matters.

26 Author photographs also help seal the autobiographical pact and establish scientific authority. David Biro’s cover photograph shows him wearing a respectable shirt and tie under the symbolic and persuasive white coat: the publishers have chosen to showcase his role in this narrative as a doctor rather than as a patient (we assume it is him in the photograph). Abraham Verghese appears on the cover of his book without the white coat but in a medical context, a stethoscope draped around his neck, and a pose suggesting a comfortable bedside manner. A patient with AIDS is visible in the background, further confirming the veracity of the document.

27 Scientific authority is also materialised in the presence of photographs of the author with other scientists, in technical diagrams and in the scholarly apparatus of “notes on sources” including references to well-known scientific reviews. However, because the reader has not agreed to a scholarly piece of writing, these notes are deferred to the unobtrusive final pages without so much as a footnote to refer to them (Gawande).

28 Along with these multiform assurances of scientific authority we nevertheless find claims that the narrative is above all to be read as a personal interpretation of events. If textbooks are, as has been claimed, a mosaic of claims from which the personal and the provisional have been removed, autobiographical writing is the very opposite. It is rather a distillation of the personal element. Watson, for example, declares:

[…] this account represents the way I saw things then, in 1951-3: the ideas, the people and myself.

I am aware that the other participants in this story would tell parts of it in other ways, sometimes because their memory of what happened differs from mine and, perhaps in even more cases, because no two people ever see the same events in exactly the same light. (Watson 1968: 13-14)

29 In the sequel to this book, Watson’s revindication of the right to personal interpretation stretches the autobiographical pact to the limit. In his foreword, Peter Pauling voices the following reservation, “As a work of reference to what actually happened, this book is unreliable. There are many mistakes and errors of fact” (Watson 2002: ix).

30 In most cases however, the combination of the autobiographical pact, the assurance of scientific authority and the promise of a personal approach to the material invites readers to consider the narrator as a uniquely qualified authority, compelling the reader’s belief in the story and in the importance of the narrator.

31 Another common characteristic tying these scientists’ autobiographies together is a concern with the accessibility of science. Explicitly or implicitly, writers of scientific autobiography consider themselves to be mediators between the world of science and the non-scientist. Often the authors see themselves as ideal mediators because, for some reason, they stand apart from the community being described. Atul Gawande creates his niche in this way: “I am a surgical resident […] and this book arises from the intensity of that experience […] a resident has a distinctive vantage point on medicine. You are an insider, seeing everything and a part of everything, yet at the same time you see it anew” (Gawande 2002: 7-8). Indeed, there is in all of these books the expression of a strange sense of displacement, perhaps the catalyst for self-representation. Watson is not in his own country and not working in the field he was trained for. Gawande is in the process of professional metamorphosis. Verghese has never really had a home and is now moving around for career reasons. Kingsolver is geographically displaced. Biro is temporarily in the land of the ill, on the other side of the doctor patient fence and Feynman flits from one activity to another. Beckwith moves between social activism and research, and Bonner writes of practices in a world of scientific research that has changed beyond all recognition.

32 Feynman is concerned with the notion of integrity vis-à-vis the general public. He reports saying in his Caltec commencement address:

I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. […] I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen. (Feynman 1985: 343)

33 Scientific discourse is frequently described as deliberately exclusive. Autobiographical writing, on the other hand, has to be inclusive, otherwise it would have an audience as limited as that of professional journals. This does not mean, however, that there is no technical language, but that language is usually either glossed, reformulated, joked about or used simply to establish the author’s authority in the field. By this I mean that the author does not intend the lay reader to understand every single concept but merely to be convinced of his/her scientific competence. Take this passage from Atul Gawande’s book, for example, where he describes the work of his father, a urologist:

[…] he has had to learn to put in penile protheses, to perform microsurgery, to reverse vasectomies, to do nerve-sparing prostatectomies, to implant artificial urinary sphincters. He’s had to learn to use shock-wave lithotripters, electrohydraulic lithotripters, and laser lithotripters (all instruments for breaking up kidney stones); to deploy double J ureteral stents and Silicone Figure Four Coil stents and Retro-Inject Multi-Length stents (don’t even ask); to maneuver fiber-optic ureteroscopes. (Gawande 2002: 25-26)

34 Note that while the word lithotripter is glossed, the last three stents are not: “don’t even ask” may be a jokey aside but it establishes, nonetheless, Gawande’s superior mastery of the language and the procedures of surgery.

35 In many ways scientific autobiography might be seen as the ultimate popularisation – an effort by the scientist to make the opaque world of his/her practices accessible to the lay reader. Various commentators have written on the importance of popularisation work on the production of scientific knowledge by means of a sort of backwash effect. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the popular doesn’t just influence the professional but has priority (Myers 1990: 190). Indeed, we might adopt Myers’ description, originally applied to review articles but equally applicable to autobiographies of “textual forms in which the original communication is modified, amplified, fused and melted” (Myers 1993: 70). Alternatively, we might just as well take up Mellor’s less viscous image of popular books acting as “nodal points in an intertextual web” (Mellor 2003: 509). She claims that popular books do work for the scientific community in a not entirely innocent way: “Indeed they are interesting precisely because of the active boundary work they do in protecting the position of science in a hierarchy of ways of knowing while appearing to be merely playing the popular market” (Mellor 2003: 519).

36 We also see in all of these autobiographies the reflection of the social influences and social processes at work in the production and application of scientific knowledge.These writings clearly show, for example, the ways in which scientists knowingly live their lives to create the best CV possible, while taking into account personal factors. This passage from Paul Nurse’s autobiographical note illustrates that close knit:

It was now 1980 and Anne and myself had two little children Sarah and Emily, and we were wondering whether to stay permanently in Edinburgh. This possibility bothered me as I thought it was not advisable to remain in one academic environment, and the long dark winters in Edinburgh could be rather dismal. I also thought that the next stage in cell cycle analysis required molecular genetics, and fission yeast was not developed for these types of experiments, and so I looked for an environment which would make this possible. (Nurse: web page)

37 Young comments on this hustling phenomenon that so profoundly influences the way scientists live:

The requirements of the research, the next post, the next grant are, I believe, even more pressing and blinkering than they are in other niches of the division of labour. Everyone knows this about medical education and training. It is not so well-researched and understood in physics, chemistry, molecular biology and engineering. This needs to change. I also think that scientists – except when they are doing PR or speaking at prize-giving ceremonies – know perfectly that they are utterly immersed in the same cultural, economic and other conflicts, contradictions and compromises as the rest of us. They hustle ­– more and more as governments squeeze them. They really must give up their false-self facades. (Young 1993: web page)

38 Of course, some of these scientists refused to take up the false-self facades condemned by Young. Jon Beckwith, more than most scientists, is aware of the social influences and ideological influences at work in the biology arena. On announcing their genetic feat, the first isolation of a gene from a chromosome, he, along with co-workers, expressed concern that such manipulations could ultimately be dangerous for humanity. He comments: “Little in my scientific career up to that point had connected with social concerns about science. But just as there was a scientific trajectory in the late 1950s and 1960s, there was also a political trajectory” (Beckwith 2002: 37). Later in the autobiography, he expresses regret that young scientists are not educated in past controversies surrounding the social impact of science, arguing that they thus lose a part of their history – and in his view “a part of their humanity” (Beckwith 2002: 56).

39 Autobiographical writing might also be seen as an arena in which writers are able to justify choices made, be they professional or personal. Abraham Verghese, for example, decides against a procedural speciality which financially would be much more lucrative and much more acceptable in the Asian doctor community, while Biro decides to go ahead with a bone marrow transplant against his first specialist’s advice (a choice not entirely vindicated). This justification is a message apparently intended for both the professional community and the family entourage. Not surprisingly, another common characteristic is a personal investment in creative writing. William Carlos Williams is the obvious example: for him, the need to write was imperious. When he had an idea he had to get it down on paper, he had to cleanse himself of his torments, even if it meant writing between patients. In his own words, he was “like a woman at term” (Williams 1948: foreword). David Biro too had invested time in learning about literature, even studying with Terry Eagleton at Oxford and organising his schedule as a dermatologist around writing in the afternoons.

7  Cf. for example « Portrait d'un biologiste en capitaliste sauvage » ( In Latour 1993: 100-129).

40 Let us return to our initial question, why study scientific autobiography? Young has argued for the importance of biography in understanding the creation of science, claiming that, “biography is not an adjunct to the serious business of understanding nature, human nature, and history. Rather, […] biography is neither finally personal nor historical but the crucible in which we can forge the best understanding of those forces” (Young 1987: 219). Likewise, we would argue that autobiography is a fundamental element of our understanding of the scientific process, and that many scientific lives are, in fact, autobiography-driven. Career moves are made within the scientific community to accumulate credit as Bruno Latour has shown 7 but that credit means nothing if it is not set down on paper and submitted to the appropriate audience. Paul de Man asserts:

We assume the life produces the autobiography as an act produces its consequences, but can we not suggest, with equal justice, that the autobiographical project may itself produce and determine the life and that whatever the writer does is in fact governed by the technical demands of self-portraiture and thus determined, in all aspects, by the resources of its medium? (de Man 1979: 920)

• 8  For an account of the use of scientific autobiography in the teaching of chemistry see Caroll & Se (...)

41 Although this article has not been concerned with the specific applications of autobiography in the field of ESP, it is clear that a close reading of these autobiographical texts in the ESP classroom would be a useful addition to our already well-established use of other authentic scientific texts, 8 both in terms of linguistic exploitation and the joint ethnographic exploration, by teacher and student, of the target discourse community.

Bibliography

Beckwith, Jon. 2002. Making Genes, Making Waves. A Social Activist in Science . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Beer, Gillian. 1987. “Problems of description in the language of discovery”. In Levine, George, One Culture . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 35-58.

Biro, David. 2000. One Hundred Days. My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient . New York: Vintage.

Bonner, John Tyler. 2002. Lives of a Biologist, Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Caroll, Felix A. & Jeffrey I. Seeman. 2001. “Placing science into its human context: Using scientific autobiography to teach chemistry”. Journal of Chemical Education 78,1618-1623.

Crick, Francis. 1988. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery . New York: Basic Books.

de Man, Paul. 1979. “Autobiography as de-facement”. Modern Language Notes 94/5, 919-930.

Duffin, Jacalyn. 2000. “The doctor and the zebra”. In CMAJ 162/13, 1857-1860.

Feynman, Richard P. 1985. “Surely You ’ re Joking Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character . London: Vintage.

Gawande, Atul. 2002. Complications: A Surgeon ’ s Notes on an Imperfect Science . London: Profile.

Kingsolver, Barbara.1995. High Tide in Tuscon: Essays from Now or Never . New York: Harper.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. La Clef de Berlin et autres leçons d ’ un amateur de sciences . Paris: la Découverte.

Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. 1986 [1979]. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. 1996. La vie de laboratoire: la production des faits scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte.

Lejeune, Philippe. 1975. Le Pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil.

Lejeune, Philippe. Autopacte. < http://www.autopacte.org/ >.

Lejeune, Philippe. “Le pacte autobiographique, 25 ans après”. < http://www.autopacte.org/Pacte_ 25_ans_apr%E8s.html >.

Mellor, Felicity. 2003. “Between fact and fiction: Demarcating science from non-science in popular physics books.” Social Studies of Science 33/4, 509-538.

Myers, Greg. 1990. Writing Biology : Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge . Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Myers, Greg. 1991. “Stories and styles in two molecular biology review articles”. InBazerman, Charles & James Paradis, Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities . Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Nurse, Paul.  “Sir Paul Nurse – Autobiography.” Official Nobel Foundation < http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/2001/nurse-autobio.html >.

Smith, Sidonie & Julia Watson. 2001. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives . Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press.

Time 161/9, March 3, 2003

Verghese, Abraham. 1995. My Own Country: A Doctor ’ s Story . New York: Vintage.

Watson, James D.1968. The Double Helix. A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA . London: Penguin.

Watson, James D. 2001. Genes, Girls and Gamow . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Williams, William Carlos. 1948. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams . New York: New Directions.

Woolgar, Steve. 1980. “Discovery, logic and sequence in a scientific text”. In Knorr et al . (eds.), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 239-268.

Young, Robert M. 1987. “Darwin and the genre of biography”. In Levine, George One Culture , Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 203-224.

Young, Robert M. 1993 “What scientists have to learn”. Revised text of a talk given at the Wellcome Trust < http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper31h.html >.

Yoxen, Edward. 1985. “Speaking out about competition. An Essay on ‘The Double Helix’ as popularisation”. In Shinn, Terry & RichardWhitley, Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation . Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 163-181.

2  There are, of course, important differences between the lives and professional activities of those who work in medicine and those who work in science. For the purposes of the present article, however, I include doctors of medicine under the term “scientists”.

3  The fee for writing in popular journals may be relatively small but successful books can be real money-spinners. Watson proudly declares in Genes, Girls and Gamow that his book Biology was earning him the equivalent of half of his professor’s salary. Similarly, Mellor points out that Stephen Hawkings earned about £2 for each of the 9 million copies of A Brief History of Time (Mellor 2003: 519).

5  Young condemns this blind belief in the wisdom of scientists: “They can pronounce with the authority of an expert on objectivity about all sorts of things and, for the most part, get away with it. They are not only thought expert in rationality; they are thought wise. I am thinking, for example, of some of the sillier pronouncements of Louis Wolpert (who condemns sociology and the philosophy of science out of hand) and Richard Dawkins (who deploys scientistic analogies with touching philosophical simplicity), as well as of the ways scientists from Einstein to Bronowski to Zuckerman to Medawar have been treated as gurus when they hold forth far beyond their areas of undoubted contribution. They offer science as above the battle and as an arbiter of cultural issues in a startling and deeply embarrassing way” (Young 1993).

6  In fact, increasingly, the blurb is not only on the back of the book but on the front cover, sprawled across the first few pages and in the inside of the covers too.

8  For an account of the use of scientific autobiography in the teaching of chemistry see Caroll & Seeman (2001).

Bibliographical reference

Lesley Graham , “Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre” ,  ASp , 43-44 | 2004, 57-67.

Electronic reference

Lesley Graham , “Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre” ,  ASp [Online], 43-44 | 2004, Online since 17 March 2010 , connection on 19 April 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/asp/1039; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.1039

About the author

Lesley graham.

Lesley Graham is maître de conférences at the Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2. Her research interests currently centre on peri-professional writing, the sociology of science, and the discourse of medicine. She is an active member of the Équipe d ’ Accueil 2025. [email protected]

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Assignment Biography: Student Criteria and Rubric for Writing

Researching an Individual Aligned to Common Core Writing Standards

• Tips & Strategies
• An Introduction to Teaching
• Policies & Discipline
• Community Involvement
• School Administration
• Technology in the Classroom
• Teaching Adult Learners
• Issues In Education
• Teaching Resources
• Becoming A Teacher
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• M.A., English, Western Connecticut State University
• B.S., Education, Southern Connecticut State University

The genre of  biography can also be categorized in the sub-genre of  narrative nonfiction/historical nonfiction. When a teacher assigns a biography as a writing assignment, the purpose is to have a student utilize multiple research tools to gather and to synthesize information that may be used as evidence in a written report about an individual. The evidence gained from research can include a person’s words, actions, journals, reactions, related books, interviews with friends, relatives, associates, and enemies. The historical context is equally important. Since there are people who have influenced every academic discipline, assigning a biography can be a cross-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary writing assignment. 

Middle and high school teachers should allow students to have a choice in selecting the subject for a biography. Providing student choice, particularly for students in grades 7-12, increases their engagement and their motivation especially if students select individuals they care about. Students would find it difficult to write about a person they do not like. Such an attitude compromises the process of researching and writing the biography.

According to by Judith L. Irvin, Julie Meltzer and Melinda S. Dukes in their book  Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy:

"As humans, we are motivated to engage when we are interested or have real purpose for doing so. So motivation to engage [students] is the first step on the road to improving literacy habits and skills" (Chapter 1).

Students should find at least three different sources (if possible) to make sure the biography is accurate. A good biography is well-balanced and objective. That means if there is disagreement between sources, the student can use the evidence to state that there is a conflict.  Students should know that a good biography is more than a timeline of events in a person's life.

The context of a person's life is important. Students should include information about the historical time period in which a subject lived and did her/his work. 

In addition, the student should have a purpose for researching another person's life. For example, the purpose for a student to research and write a biography can be in a response to the prompt:

"How does this writing this biography help me to understand the influence of this person on history, and quite possibly, this person's impact on me?"

The following standards-based criteria and scoring rubrics can be used to grade a student-selected biography. Both criteria and rubrics should be given to students before they begin their work. 

Criteria for a Student Biography aligned to Common Core State Standards

A General Outline for Biography Details

• Birthdate /Birthplace
• Death (if applicable).
• Family Members.
• Miscellaneous (religion, titles, etc).

Education/Influences

• Schooling.Training.
• Work Experiences.
• Contemporaries/Relationships.

Accomplishments/  Significance

• Evidence of major accomplishments.
• Evidence of minor accomplishments (if relevant).
• The analysis that supports why the individual was worthy of note in their field of expertise during his or her life.
• Analysis why this individual is worthy of note in their field of expertise today.

Quotes/Publications

• Statements made.
• Works published.

Biography Organization using the CCSS Anchor Writing Standards 

• Transitions are effective in assisting the reader to understand shifts.
• Ideas within each paragraph are fully developed.
• Each point is supported by evidence.
• All evidence is relevant.  
• Important terms are explained to the reader.
• Purpose of each paragraph (introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion) is clear.  
• Clear relationship between topic sentence(s) and paragraph(s) that came before is evident.

Grading Rubric: Holistic Standards with Letter Grade Conversions

(based on extended response Smarter Balanced Assessment writing rubric)

Score: 4 or Letter Grade: A

Student response is a thorough elaboration of the support/evidence on the topic (individual) including the effective use of source material. The response clearly and effectively develops ideas, using precise language:

• Comprehensive evidence (facts and details) from source materials are integrated.
• Relevant, and specific clear citations or attribution to source materials.
• Effective use of a variety of elaborative techniques.
• Vocabulary is clearly appropriate for the audience and purpose. 
• Effective, appropriate style enhances content.

Score: 3  Letter Grade: B

Student response is an adequate elaboration of the support/evidence in the biography that includes the use of source materials. The student response adequately develops ideas, employing a mix of precise and more general language:  

• Adequate evidence (facts and details) from the source materials is integrated and relevant, yet the evidence and explanation may be general.
• Adequate use of citations or attribution to the source material.  
• Adequate use of some elaborative techniques.
• Vocabulary is generally appropriate for the audience and purpose.
• The style is generally appropriate for the audience and purpose.

Score: 2 Letter Grade: C

Student response is uneven with a cursory elaboration of the support/evidence in the biography that includes the uneven or limited use of source material. The student response develops ideas unevenly, using simplistic language:

• Some evidence (facts and details) from the source materials may be weakly integrated, imprecise, repetitive, vague, and/or copied.
• Weak use of citations or attribution to source materials.
• Weak or uneven use of elaborative techniques.
• Development may consist primarily of source summaries.
• Vocabulary use is uneven or somewhat ineffective for the audience and purpose.
• Inconsistent or weak attempt to create the appropriate style.

Score: 1 Letter Grade: D

Student response provides a minimal elaboration of the support/evidence in the biography that includes little or no use of source material. The student response is vague, lacks clarity, or is confusing:

• Evidence (facts and details) from the source material is minimal, irrelevant, absent, incorrectly used. 
• Insufficient use of citations or attribution to the source material.
• Minimal, if any, use of elaborative techniques.
• Vocabulary is limited or ineffective for the audience and purpose.
• Little or no evidence of appropriate style.
• Insufficient or plagiarized (copied without credit) text.
• Off-topic. 
• Off-purpose.
• Grading for Proficiency in the World of 4.0 GPAs
• How to Write an Interesting Biography
• T.E.S.T. Season for Grades 7-12
• Topics for a Lesson Plan Template
• The Whys and How-tos for Group Writing in All Content Areas
• How to Create a Rubric in 6 Steps
• Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
• Beef Up Critical Thinking and Writing Skills: Comparison Essays
• What Is Plagiarism?
• 10 Test Question Terms and What They Ask Students to Do
• Higher Level Thinking: Synthesis in Bloom's Taxonomy
• What Is a Rubric?
• Writing Prompt (Composition)
• Rubrics - Quick Guide for all Content Areas

Browse Course Material

Course info.

• Dr. Andrea Walsh

Departments

• Comparative Media Studies/Writing

As Taught In

• Media Studies
• Creative Writing

Learning Resource Types

Writing and experience: reading and writing autobiography, assignments.

Some assignments are due between class sessions. These are listed in the right column, but without any session numbers.

In the table below, “distribute” indicates when an assignment is handed out, and “due” indicates when it is due.

For additional guidelines see Guidelines for Homework and Class Participation (PDF) .

Supplemental Handouts

Working With Images of the Future Self (PDF)

Working With Interior Monologue (PDF)

The Soundtracks of Our Lives: Integrating Music Into Autobiographical Writing (PDF)

Integrating Music Writing Exercise (PDF)

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Paying Attention to Technology: Writing Technology Autobiographies

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

As citizens of a highly technological culture, our students see (and often use) technologies as a daily experience. Because of their proliferation, these technologies are often taken for granted and unexplored. This lesson plan asks students to pay attention to these technologies explicitly. In this activity, students brainstorm lists of their interactions with technology, map these interactions graphically, and then compose narratives of their most significant interactions with technology. By writing these technology autobiographies, students explore what their stories reveal about why we use the technologies we do when we choose to use them.

Featured Resources

Graphic Map Student Interactive : Students can use this online tool to chart the high and low points related to a particular item or group of items, such as technology interaction.

Technology Autobiography Assignment : This handout provides students with the requirements and directions for the technology autobiography.

From Theory to Practice

In her 1999 Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century , Cynthia L. Selfe urges that educators "must try to understand-to pay attention to-how technology is now inextricably linked to literacy and literacy education in this country; and second, we must help colleagues, students, administrators, politicians, and other Americans gain some increasingly critical and productive perspective on technological literacy" (24). Just learning to use a piece of software or new digital gizmo is not enough. We need to explore technological literacy, which Selfe defines as "a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating" (11). In other words, our classroom activities need to consider not just how to use technology but also to pay attention to why we use the technologies we do when we do.

Technology autobiographies ask writers to examine their interaction with technologies closely. As Kitalong et. al explain, "[T]echnology is taken for granted, invisible, a mere backdrop to their lives. Writing technology autobiographies encourages [students] to reflect upon their own (and sometimes other people's) experiences with technology, which leads them to think critically about technology. In the process, the invisibles become visible, the implicit can be made explicit" (219).

Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
• Technology Autobiography Assignment
• Technology Autobiography Examples
• Kristin L. Arola's Technology Autobiography

Preparation

• Make copies of the Technology Autobiography Assignment .
• Choose one or more technology autobiography examples sample or use Kristin L. Arola's Technology Autobiography to share with students. Make copies or an overhead for them to read and refer to.
• Test the Graphic Map Student Interactive on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.
• If desired, share example Graphic Life Maps from the 6-8 lesson plan . While the focus of the examples from this lesson plan is different, students should be able to understand that their own maps will be similar to those linked to the lesson plan.

Student Objectives

Students will

• explore and expand their definitions of technology.
• identify key moments, people, and places in their personal relationships with technology.
• create an evaluative scale, from high points to low points, ranking the most significant moments or interactions.
• write an autobiographical essay that explores their relationship to technology.

Session One

• Explain that you are about to begin an exploration of your relationships with technology.
• To begin, ask students to spend 5 to 10 minutes freewriting about the role that technology plays in their lives.
• Once the writing is complete, explain that students will return to the freewriting later, but that they can set it aside for now.
• Ask students to brainstorm a list of technologies that they use, see, or know about in their notebooks, in order to give students a few minutes to gather their thoughts.
• After everyone has collected a short list of ideas, invite students to share the technologies and write all the responses on the board, chart paper, or an overhead. You will return to this list in later sessions.
• What technology do you have in your backpack or locker?
• What technology do you see in the classroom?
• What technology do you see in other classrooms and locations in the school?
• What technology do you see in the workplace (yours, a family member's, or someone else's)?
• What technology do you see on your way from home to school?
• What technology do you see in the mall or grocery store?
• What technology did you see or use when you were younger?
• If students have not included nondigital technologies in their list, share the first two paragraphs of the definition of technology from Wikipedia . The  outline of technology available at Wikipedia may also stimulate discussion.
• With this expanded definition, ask students to suggest additional technologies to add to the class list. Encourage them to focus in particular on non-computerized technologies for a few minutes.
• At this point, you should have an extensive list of technologies assembled. Step back and review the entire list with the students. Make any additions, revisions, or deletions students suggest as you examine the list as a whole.
• If any patterns emerge from the list, take a few minutes to talk about the comparisons among technologies. Consider not only similarities among the items but also patterns in how the information was shared (e.g., does the list begin with personal technologies like cell phones and laptops and later move on to industrial technologies such as nuclear power reactors?). Your goal is simply to ask students to think more deeply about the various technologies that they use, see, or know.
• As discussion concludes, ask students to collect a personal list of 20 to 25 technologies that they have had some personal experience with from the class list. Encourage students to be sure to include technologies that have been particularly significant in their lives.
• For homework, ask students to return to the freewriting they wrote at the beginning of the session. Ask students to reflect on their original response in a second freewriting or journal entry, focusing on how their response would change as a result of the class list that was compiled and the personal list of technologies that they identified at the end of the session.

Session Two

• Distribute the Technology Autobiography Assignment to the class and discuss the assignment.
• Share one or more technology autobiography examples written by Michigan Tech Publication Management Students during Fall 1999.
• Divide students into groups and ask each group to examine at least one example technology autobiography. In their groups, ask students to note specific characteristics that make the autobiography successful.
• Circulate among students as they work, answering any questions.
• Once groups have had a chance to gather four or more characteristics, bring the class together and invite group members to share, noting the characteristics on the board or on chart paper.
• Ask students to suggest similar characteristics that have been recorded. When possible combine ideas to simplify the list, which will serve as a checklist for writers as they work on their autobiographies.
• Ask students to look back at their personal list of technologies and their freewriting from the previous class and circle or highlight significant details.
• For homework, or in class if time allows, ask students to narrow their personal lists of technologies to no more than 15 items, arranged into roughly chronological order. Explain that it's is fine-indeed likely -that technologies will be repeated on the list as they are shifting their focus from all the technologies they have interacted with to those key interactions with the technologies that have shaped how they have become the technology users they are today.

Session Three

• Demonstrate the Graphic Map Student Interactive , which students will use to gather more specific details about the key technology interactions.
• After typing a name for the project and their own names, students choose a label for the items they are going to list. Their choice will be the label for the horizontal line on their finished Graphic Map (the X-axis on a mathematical graph). Discuss the options for labeling the information. The most obvious choice is "Time"-with students listing the day or year that specific interactions occurred; however, students may find other ways to structure their information.
• After choosing, click Next and show students the options for how they will rate their technology interactions. Students can choose any of the rating options. The "3, 2, 1/-1, -2, -3" option provides the widest range of choices.
• After choosing, click Next . Demonstrate that students can change any of the choices they have made by clicking the Edit tab.
• Enter a technology interaction as an example, filling in the information and choosing a rating. Explain that the information that students enter in the Graphic Map Student Interactive can be used later as they write their autobiographies, so the details that they include in the description field will be useful later.
• Enter two or three more sample interactions, and click Finished to show students the Print Preview, which shows the relationship among the items.
• Explain that the tool allows for a maximum of 15 items. If students want to include more technology interactions, suggest that they focus on specific ranges and complete a different Graphic Map for each (e.g., interactions in pre-school, interactions in elementary school, and interactions in middle and high school each as separate maps).
• Mouse over items on the Print Preview to show the topic title, and double-click on an item to edit the information.
• Demonstrate the printing process. You must change the printer to use Landscape orientation in order to print the entire map.
• Answer any questions then give students the rest of the class period to expand the items from their personal lists from the previous sessions using the Graphic Map Student Interactive .
• Circulate among students as they work, answering any questions. Remind students to print their work, and help them change the printer setting to Landscape orientation if necessary.
• For homework, ask students to use the notes from previous sessions and the information from the Graphic Map Student Interactive to compose their technology autobiographies. Students should come to the next class session with a complete draft.

Session Four

• Divide students into groups and ask them to share their technology autobiographies with one another.
• Ask students to look for similarities among the autobiographies in their group as well as what the details reveal about themselves and others in their groups.
• Allow students enough time to read the autobiographies in their groups and spend a few minutes in general discussion of their impressions of the pieces.
• Give each group a piece of chart paper and ask them to brainstorm what the technology interactions in their group's autobiographies reveal about them.
• After each group has had a chance to collect a list, ask groups to post and share their observations with the rest of the class.
• After all the lists are posted, ask students to identify patterns among the lists. Add or revise information on the charts as students discuss the information.
• Conclude the session by asking students what the lists and their stories reveal about the various groups that they are members of-their school, their family, their community, and so forth.
• For homework, ask students to review their freewriting from Session One as well as their Graphic Maps and autobiographies. Ask students to reflect on what they've learned about their relationship to technology in another freewriting or journal entry.
• After completing their autobiographies, try the Paying Attention to Technology: Exploring a Fictional Technology lesson plan. In this lesson, students complete a short survey to establish their beliefs about technology then to compare their opinions to the ideas in a novel that depicts technology (such as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, REM World, or Feed ). The lesson plan can also be completed with short stories, video games, films, and other fictional resources that examine issues related to science and technology and their possible effects on society.
• Use the questions from the Technology Autobiography Heuristic as starting points for student discussion or journal prompts for writing that extends the activity.

Student Assessment / Reflections

This activity should be treated as an informal writing and critical thinking assignment. You may give participation points simply for completing the activity, keeping anecdotal records of students’ participation in the process and checking off students’ work during the course of the activity. Review students’ final journal entry and focus feedback on students’ recognition of significant technology interactions. Provide support for reflections that demonstrate students are able to move beyond their own personal stories to draw conclusions and ask questions about the how technologies influence the world around them and what technologies reveal about the cultures that they are a part of.

• Calendar Activities
• Student Interactives

The Graphic Map assists teachers and students in reading and writing activities by charting the high and low points related to a particular item or group of items, such as events during a day or chapters in a book.

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Biographical Resources for the Sciences: Home

• Organizing Your Research
• Resources Within Specific Time Periods
• Geographically-Specialized Resources
• Field-Specialized Resources
• Other Collected Science Biographies
• Membership Directories or Listings
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Welcome to the Science Biography Subject Guide. In this guide you'll find:

• links to online science biographical resources
• a list of paper sources for science biography by field
• a list of resources on Nobel Prize Laureates
• a list of sources for geographically-specialized entries
• links, citations, and tips for finding resources related to science biography

Library Resources in Science Biography for Famous and Some Lesser-Known Scientists

This guide provides links, citations, and tips for finding resources related to science biography. 

Famous Scientists and broad coverage :

Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography - Features deceased scientists from ancient times through the 21st Century. Signed articles. Some portraits in black and white. Bibliographies. Index by specialty. Online version of Dictionary of Scientific Biography and New Dictionary of Scientific Biography.  Print editions held at Marx Library, Medical/Historical Library, and SML Starr Main Reference Room.

ORBIS - Online Catalog (books and journals in the Yale University Library System) To find biographies or autobiographies for an individual, enter the person's name in Orbis Advanced search keyword box. An example book is: Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian by EF Rivinius and EM Youssef. Library Shelving Facility QH31 B17 R58X For collective science biography enter a keyword search such as scientists biography or biologists biography. Some biographical indexes are also available which cover entries in collective science biography. These books may be found in Orbis by entering a keyword search such as science bio-bibliography indexes.

The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. 2 volumes Editors: Roy Porter and Marilyn Ogilvie. 3rd edition Helicon Publishing, c2000. Over 1280 biographies of men and women scientists, living and deceased, from throughout time.  International in scope. Fields covered include: astronomy, botany, biology, chemistry, cosmology, engineering, exploration, geology, mathematics, physics.  Bibliographies for further reading. LSF

Biographical Memoirs , National Academy of Sciences. - Many of these volumes are online through Orbis as well as online through the Academy. Portraits and life events and a selected bibliography for deceased members of the Academy. 1877-

World Biographical Information System . - Database from De Gruyter. Biographical information on > 6 million people starting from the 8th century B.C. to the end of the 20th century. Collects information from 30 biographical archives. Includes Johann Christian Poggendorff's Biographisch-Literarisches Handworterbuch der exakten Naturwissenschaften/Biographisch-Literarisches Handworterbuch zur Geschichte der exacten Wissenschaften. For deceased persons. International in scope and covering all fields. 

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How to Write an Autobiography Fast

Writing your autobiography is like exploring a treasure trove of memories that make up your life. But starting can feel overwhelming. Where do you begin? How do you turn your experiences into a compelling story? Don't worry – this guide is here to help. Whether you're a seasoned writer or a total beginner, we'll break down the process of how to write your autobiography into easy-to-follow steps. Together, we'll uncover the magic of storytelling and turn your life into a captivating reflective essay that's uniquely yours. Get ready to start this adventure of self-discovery and creativity!

What Is an Autobiography

The autobiography definition explains it is a written account of a person's life penned by the individual who has lived those experiences. It is a personal narrative that chronicles significant events, reflections, and emotions throughout various stages of the author's life. Unlike a biography, which is typically written by someone else, an autobiography provides a firsthand perspective, allowing the author to share their thoughts, memories, and insights. It is a cogent medium for self-expression, enabling students to convey the essence of their unique journey, impart lessons learned, and leave a lasting record of their lives for themselves and others to explore.

Need Help With Writing an AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

All you have to do to get professional help is to us send your paper requirements and set the deadline.

Autobiography vs. Biography: What’s the Difference

The key distinction between an autobiography and a biography lies in the authorship and perspective. An autobiography is a personal account of one's own life written by the subject themselves. It offers an intimate insight into the author's experiences, emotions, and reflections. For instance, in "The Diary of a Young Girl," Anne Frank provides a poignant autobiographical account of her life hiding from the Nazis during World War II. On the other hand, a biography is a narrative of someone's life written by another person. It often involves extensive research and interviews to present a comprehensive and objective view. A notable example is "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, a biography offering an in-depth portrayal of the Apple co-founder, drawing on interviews with Jobs himself and those who knew him. While both genres illuminate lives, the crucial difference lies in the source of the narrative – whether it emanates directly from the subject or is crafted by an external observer.

A biography vs autobiography offers distinct perspectives on individuals' lives, shaping narratives through either personal reflections or external observations. Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is a powerful autobiography chronicling her tumultuous childhood and journey toward self-discovery. In contrast, a notable biography like "Leonardo da Vinci" by Walter Isaacson delves into the life of the Renaissance polymath, painting a vivid picture through meticulous research and analysis. Autobiographies often provide a deeply personal lens, as seen in "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, where Walls recounts her unconventional upbringing. In contrast, biographies such as "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand meticulously document the extraordinary life of Louis Zamperini, offering a comprehensive view shaped by the author's investigative work. These examples underscore the unique storytelling approaches each genre employs, either from the firsthand perspective of the subject or the external perspective of an author.

Autobiography Example

Ready to explore autobiography examples? We've got a cool section coming up where we'll check out two awesome examples. Autobiographies are like personal tours into someone's life, and we'll be looking at the stories of Alex Sterling and Trevor Noah. They've poured their experiences onto the pages, and we're going to see what we can learn from their journeys. Get ready to be inspired and maybe even think about telling your own story down the line. Let's dive in!

Example 1: “Wanderer's Odyssey: The Uncharted Life of Alex Sterling”

This autobiography recounts the life of a character born in a bustling city who, driven by a thirst for adventure, leaves behind urban life to explore the open road. The narrative explores the protagonist's experiences of hitchhiking, forming connections, and finding self-discovery in the midst of the unpredictable journey. The story emphasizes the lessons learned from the road, the challenges faced, and the ultimate embrace of authenticity. The epilogue reflects on the character's life as a well-lived odyssey, highlighting themes of resilience, connection, and the pursuit of one's true identity.

Example 2: “Echoes of Eternity: The Memoirs of Amelia Reed”

This autobiography follows a character from a countryside village who harbors expansive dreams of adventure. The narrative unfolds as the protagonist sets out to pursue these dreams, facing trials and triumphs that shape their character and lead to self-discovery. The story emphasizes the transformative power of embracing the unknown, with the epilogue reflecting on a life well-lived, highlighting the legacy of fulfilled dreams and the enduring impact on future generations. In addition to examples, we have samples of narrative essay topics that might be useful for you as well.

Tell your story with EssayPro . Our skilled writers can help you craft an autobiography that truly reflects your journey. Share your unique experiences and life lessons in a way that resonates with readers.

Autobiography Elements Explained

Writing an autobiography provides a personal account of one's experiences, achievements, challenges, and personal growth. While each autobiography is unique, certain common elements are often found in this genre:

Introduction

• Autobiographies typically begin with an introduction where the author sets the stage for their life story.
• It may include background information such as birthplace, family, and early experiences.

Birth and Early Years

• Authors often include details about their birth, childhood, and family background.
• Early influences, relationships, and experiences that shaped the individual may be highlighted.

Significant Life Events

• Autobiographies focus on key events and milestones that have had a significant impact on the author's life.
• This could include achievements, failures, relationships, and other impactful experiences.

Challenges and Obstacles

• Autobiographies explore the challenges and obstacles the author faced throughout their life.
• This can include personal struggles, professional setbacks, or other difficulties.

Personal Growth and Development

• Authors reflect on their personal growth and development over the years.
• This may involve self-discovery, learning from experiences, and evolving perspectives.

Achievements and Milestones

• Autobiographies highlight the author's achievements, whether personal, professional, or both.
• Major milestones and successes are often detailed to showcase the individual's journey.

Influential Relationships

• Autobiographies frequently discuss relationships with family, friends, mentors, and significant others.
• The impact of these relationships on the author's life is explored.

Reflection and Insight

• Authors often reflect on their lives, offering insights into their beliefs, values, and lessons learned.
• This section may also include the author's perspective on the world and society.

Themes and Motifs

• Autobiographies may explore recurring themes or motifs that run throughout the individual's life.
• Common themes include resilience, determination, love, loss, and personal identity.
• Autobiographies typically conclude with a summary or reflection on the author's life.
• The author may share their current perspective and future aspirations.

Writing Style

• The writing style can vary, ranging from a formal tone to a more conversational and reflective approach.
• Authors may use literary devices and storytelling techniques to engage readers.

Remember that autobiographies are highly personal, and the structure and emphasis on different elements can vary widely depending on the author's preferences and purpose for writing.

Autobiographical Essay Structure

Autobiographies typically follow a chronological order, beginning with the author's early life and progressing towards the present or a significant moment. The introduction sets the stage, introducing the author and offering insight into the main themes. As you can see in an autobiography example, the narrative then unfolds, exploring the author's significant life events, challenges faced, and personal growth. Achievements and milestones are highlighted, and the impact of influential relationships is examined. Throughout, recurring themes and motifs add depth to the narrative. In the reflection and insight section, the author shares personal lessons learned and beliefs. The conclusion summarizes the autobiography, reflecting on the author's life and future aspirations.

Learning how to start an autobiography involves captivating the reader's attention while providing context. Authors often employ engaging anecdotes, vivid descriptions, or thought-provoking statements related to the overarching theme of their lives. The goal is to draw readers in from the beginning and establish a connection between the author and the audience. In the introduction, authors can introduce themselves to the reader. This can be done by sharing a captivating snapshot of their life or posing a question that intrigues the audience. The autobiography introduction sets the tone for the entire narrative, providing a glimpse into the themes and events that will be explored in the autobiography.

The autobiography conclusion offers the culmination of the author's life story. Here, authors often summarize the key points and experiences shared throughout the narrative. It is a moment of reflection, where the author can offer insights into the significance of their journey and the lessons learned along the way. The conclusion may also touch on the author's current perspective, providing a sense of closure to the narrative while leaving room for future aspirations and growth.

Literary Forms of Autobiography

Autobiographies, while generally a non-fiction genre, can take on various literary forms and styles. Here are some literary forms commonly found in autobiographical works:

Traditional Autobiography

• The straightforward narrative of an individual's life, which is usually written by the person themselves. It follows a chronological order, covering significant events and experiences.
• Similar to an autobiography but often focusing on specific themes, periods, or aspects of the author's life rather than a comprehensive account. Memoirs often delve into personal reflections and emotions.

Diary or Journal Form

• Some autobiographies adopt the form of a diary or journal, presenting the author's life through dated entries. This format provides a more immediate and personal perspective.

Epistolary Autobiography

• Written in the form of letters, an epistolary autobiography may consist of the author addressing themselves or others. This style adds an intimate and conversational tone to the narrative.

Graphic Novel or Comic Memoir

• Autobiographical stories are presented in a graphic novel or comic format. Visual elements complement the written narrative, providing a unique and engaging way to convey personal experiences.

Experimental or Nonlinear Autobiography

• Some authors choose to play with the chronological order, presenting their life story non-linearly. This experimental approach can create a more artistic and challenging reading experience.

Biographical Fiction

• While not entirely autobiographical, some authors write fictionalized versions of their own lives. It allows for creative exploration and artistic liberties while drawing inspiration from real experiences.

Travelogue Autobiography

• Autobiographies that take on the form of a travelogue often focus on the author's journeys, both physical and metaphorical. The narrative is shaped by the places visited and the impact of these experiences on personal growth.

Essayistic Autobiography

• Autobiographies that incorporate elements of essays, exploring themes, ideas, and reflections on the author's life. This form allows for a more contemplative and philosophical approach.

Collaborative Autobiography

• Co-written autobiographies involve collaboration between the autobiographical subject and a professional writer. It is common when the subject may not be a writer but has a compelling story to share.

These literary forms highlight the versatility of autobiographical writing, showcasing how authors can creatively shape their life stories to engage readers in various ways. Are you working on other academic assignments? Use our term paper writing services to put your finger on any pending task at hand quickly and for a reasonable price.

How to Write an Autobiography in 5 Steps

Writing an autobiography can be a rewarding and reflective process. Here's a simplified guide in 5 steps to help you get started:

Step 1: Reflection and Brainstorming

Begin by reflecting on your life, considering important events, challenges, and moments of growth. Make a mental inventory of key experiences and people who have influenced you.

Step 2: Establish a Focus

Choose a central theme or focus for your autobiography. This could be a specific period of your life, a significant achievement, or a recurring theme that ties your experiences together. Having a clear focus will guide your writing.

Step 3: Create a Chronological Outline

Develop a rough chronological outline of your life story, starting from your early years and progressing through significant events to the present or another crucial point. Identify key moments and experiences to include in each section.

Step 4: Write with Detail and Emotion

An important aspect of how to write an autobiography for college is appealing to emotion. As you delve into each body paragraph, share your story with vivid details. Use descriptive language to bring your experiences to life for the reader. Infuse your writing with emotion, allowing readers to connect with the depth of your personal journey.

Step 5: Conclude Reflectively

In the concluding section, summarize the key aspects of your life story. Reflect on the significance of your journey, the lessons you've learned, and how you've grown. Provide insights into your current perspective and aspirations for the future, bringing your autobiography to a thoughtful conclusion.

Writing Techniques to Use in an Autobiography

When you write an autobiography, the process involves employing various techniques to make the narrative engaging, evocative, and compelling. Here are some tips for writing autobiography commonly used in autobiographies:

Descriptive Language

• Use vivid and descriptive language to paint a detailed picture of events, people, and settings. Engage the reader's senses to create a more immersive experience.
• Incorporate dialogue to bring conversations to life. Direct quotes can provide authenticity and convey the personalities of the people involved.

Show, Don't Tell

• Instead of merely stating facts, show the emotions and experiences through actions, reactions, and sensory details. 

Flashbacks and Foreshadowing

• Employ flashbacks to delve into past events and foreshadowing to create anticipation about future developments. 

Metaphors and Similes

• Use metaphors and similes to enhance descriptions and convey complex emotions. Comparisons can make abstract concepts more relatable.
• Integrate symbols and motifs that hold personal significance. This adds depth to the narrative and can be a thematic thread throughout the autobiography.

Humor and Wit

• Infuse your writing with humor and wit when appropriate. 
• Introduce suspense by strategically withholding information or revealing key details at crucial moments. 

First-Person Perspective

• Utilize the first-person point of view to offer a direct and personal connection between the author and the reader. 

Dramatic Irony

• Introduce dramatic irony by revealing information to the reader that the author may not have known at the time.

Parallelism

• Create parallel structures within the narrative, drawing connections between different periods, events, or themes in your life. 

Experimenting with different styles can make your story more engaging and memorable for readers. If you haven’t used these techniques in your paper, simply say, ‘ edit my essay ,’ and our experts will imbue stylistic and creative devices in your document to increase its scholarly value.

Benefits of Writing an Autobiography

Working on an autobiography can be incredibly beneficial on a personal level. When you take the time to reflect on your life and put it into words, you gain a deeper understanding of yourself. It's like a journey of self-discovery where you uncover patterns, values, and beliefs that have shaped who you are. This process not only promotes self-awareness but can also help you grow and bounce back from tough times. Writing about challenging moments can be a therapeutic release, allowing you to confront and make sense of your experiences, leading to emotional healing.

On a broader scale, sharing your life story through an autobiography has its impact. It becomes a piece of history, offering insights into the times you've lived through, the culture around you, and societal changes. Your personal narrative connects you with others, creating empathy and understanding. Autobiographies often inspire people by showing that it's possible to overcome challenges, find purpose, and navigate the ups and downs of life. By sharing your story, you become a part of the larger human experience, contributing to a rich tapestry of diverse stories that help us better understand the shared journey of being human. Order an essay or any other type of task to streamline your educational progress is only a few clicks.

Best Piece of Advice for Making Your Autobiography Spot-on

The most valuable advice on how to write an autobiography is to infuse authenticity into every word. Be genuine, raw, and honest about your experiences, emotions, and growth. Readers connect deeply with authenticity, and it's what makes your story uniquely yours. Don't shy away from expressing vulnerability, as it adds a human touch and makes your narrative relatable. Share the highs and lows, the triumphs and struggles, with sincerity, and let your true self shine through. This honesty not only enhances the impact of your autobiography but also contributes to a more profound connection between you and your readers, creating an authentic and memorable narrative. Here are additional tips for bringing your autobiography assignment up to par:

• Essential Details. Focus on key moments that significantly contribute to your story, avoiding unnecessary details.
• Thematic Cohesion. Introduce and explore recurring themes to add depth and coherence to your narrative.
• Authentic Expression. Embrace your unique voice, personality, and storytelling style to create an authentic connection with readers.
• Dialogue and Monologue. Use genuine dialogue and inner monologue to provide insights into your thoughts and emotions during pivotal moments.
• Symbolic Elements. Incorporate symbolic imagery or metaphors to convey deeper meanings and emotions.
• Strategic Foreshadowing. Use foreshadowing purposefully, providing subtle hints that contribute meaningfully to the overall narrative.
• Reflective Closure. Conclude your autobiography with a reflective summary that offers insights into the broader significance of your journey.

Our essay writers know many more tips regarding all possible types of academic tasks. If you ever find yourself in writer’s block, not knowing how to tackle any particular assignment, let us know!

Final Words

If you want to understand how to write a good autobiography, think of it as painting a vivid picture of your life for others to see. It's about being real, digging deep into your memories, and choosing the moments that really matter. Let your personality shine through in your writing – be yourself because that's what makes your story unique. Weave in themes that tie everything together, and use storytelling techniques like dialogue and symbolism to make your narrative come alive. And as you reach the end, leave your readers with some food for thought – a reflection on the bigger lessons learned from your journey. If you ever need assistance with this or any other college assignment, use our research paper services without hesitation.

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Science Friday

Citizen scientists will capture dna from 800 lakes in one day.

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Taking an accurate census of the organisms in an ecosystem is a challenging task—an observer’s eyes and ears can’t be everywhere. But a new project aims to harness the growing field of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect species that might escape even the most intrepid ecologists. In the project, volunteers plan to take samples from some 800 lakes around the world on or around May 22, the International Day for Biological Diversity. Those samples will then be sent back to a lab in Zurich , Switzerland, where they’ll be analyzed for the tiny traces of DNA that organisms leave behind in the environment.

Dr. Kristy Deiner, organizer of the effort, hopes that just as lakes collect water from many streams across an area, they’ll also collect those eDNA traces—allowing researchers to paint a picture of the species living across a large area. She talks with SciFri’s John Dankosky about the project, and how this type of citizen science can aid the research community.

Further Reading

• Learn more about Dr. Kristy Deiner and her research on Youtube.

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Meet the Producers and Host

About sandy roberts.

Sandy Roberts is Science Friday’s Education Program Manager, where she creates learning resources and experiences to advance STEM equity in all learning environments. Lately, she’s been playing with origami circuits and trying to perfect a gluten-free sourdough recipe.

About John Dankosky

John Dankosky works with the radio team to create our weekly show, and is helping to build our State of Science Reporting Network. He’s also been a long-time guest host on Science Friday. He and his wife have three cats, thousands of bees, and a yoga studio in the sleepy Northwest hills of Connecticut. 

About Charles Bergquist

As Science Friday’s director and senior producer, Charles Bergquist channels the chaos of a live production studio into something sounding like a radio program. Favorite topics include planetary sciences, chemistry, materials, and shiny things with blinking lights.

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A dna map you can touch—or walk through.

What started as an inside joke has turned into a fantastical collaboration between an artist and a physicist studying DNA.

Celebrate Biodiversity for Citizen Science Month

April is Citizen Science Month and Science Friday is an official partner! Join us for crowdsource science projects celebrating biodiversity.

Privacy Overview

Posts Misrepresent Views of Eclipse With Composite Images

By Hadleigh Zinsner

Posted on April 18, 2024

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino .

During the April 8 eclipse, people in the path of totality were able to see solar phenomena, including the sun’s corona. But social media posts have shared altered or composite images of these phenomena, claiming one image was “captured by NASA.” It was actually an artist’s rendering of a composite photo of the 2017 eclipse.

A total solar eclipse — in which the moon blocked Earth’s view of the sun — occurred April 8 in a narrow path across Mexico, the United States and Canada. Crowds gathered in cities along the path, including Dallas, Cleveland and Montreal, to witness totality, the brief period in which the sun’s light is completely obscured by the moon.

In addition to the sky darkening, those in the path of totality were able to see a part of the sun’s atmosphere , called the corona, which is otherwise impossible to see because of the sun’s bright light.

Gary Bernstein , a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, explained the appearance of the corona in an email to us. “The sun is always in the process of ejecting a tenuous stream of gas into space. This gas emits a very faint light compared to the sun’s main body, so while it’s always present in the sky, we can’t see it on a normal day because it’s lost in the glare of the disk of the sun,” he said.

“During a total eclipse, the moon blocks the disk, and the sky becomes dark enough to see the corona.  This only occurs during the totality phase,” Bernstein said.

Another phenomenon known as Baily’s Beads — beads of light that appear around the edge of the moon during an eclipse — occurs just as totality begins and ends. “They occur because the moon has mountains and valleys, and the last rays of the sun can pass through the valleys while the mountains block light. This breaks up the very thin final arc of light into pieces,” Bernstein explained.

NASA uploaded a photo album of pictures taken during the recent eclipse, many of which show Baily’s Beads and the sun’s corona .

But some social media posts have shared the painting of a composite image or an altered image of these phenomena, and misleadingly claimed they were photos of the recent eclipse.

A Digital Painting of a 2017 Composite Photo

One image, featuring a dramatic corona, was shared on Facebook on April 9 with the caption, “Most Detailed Image of the Solar Eclipse.” The post received 88,000 likes, but has since been removed.

Several other posts also shared the image on social media, falsely claiming it was a photo taken during the eclipse and “captured by NASA.” Through a reverse image search, we found this image is actually a digital painting from 2020 by artist Cathrin Machin .

As she wrote in an Instagram caption on July 20, 2020, Machin based her painting on a picture created by astrophotographer Sebastian Voltmer in Wyoming during the 2017 total solar eclipse. Voltmer uploaded his original photo to Flickr in September 2017, and he wrote that the photo was a composite of 35 images taken during the eclipse.

Bernstein explained that many astrophotographers use composite images — that is, an image produced by combining two or more photos — “since we are taking pictures of things the human eye can’t see.” He added: “They’re not what your eye would see but they are ‘real’ in the sense of being an image of what’s truly in the sky.”

Alexei Filippenko , a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, told us, “Cameras are good at capturing the solar corona, but only with composites made from images having many different exposures. A given exposure doesn’t have a large ‘dynamic range’ the way the human eye does. The human eye can see faint and bright things well simultaneously, but a photo cannot.”

Image ‘Appears to be Altered’

Another image, which shows both Baily’s Beads and the corona, was posted to Facebook on April 10 with a caption misleadingly claiming it was from the recent eclipse. The caption, originally in Spanish, claims that the photo is “one of the best shots of the solar eclipse.”

But a spokesperson for scientists at the National Solar Observatory told us that “this image appears to be altered.”

“The S-shape of the coronal streamers on the left and right of the corona is the most obvious problem,” the NSO spokesperson told us in an email. “The coronal magnetic field does not bend in such sinuous curves. They are angled and curved at times, but a 90-degree bend in the field lines is unrealistic.”

Filippenko also raised concerns about the waviness of the corona in this image. “Although it could in principle look curvy… I’ve never seen it that way. Always, or almost always, the coronal streamers basically go radially outward from the Sun; they don’t curve much.”

The NSO spokesperson also noted that the placement of the Baily’s Beads in this image were unlikely. “They appear all around the sun simultaneously, which is unrealistic except in a very special eclipse (when the moon was exactly the same size as the Sun, so a very brief eclipse). Also, when the Baily’s beads are still present, the corona is not yet so visible and prominent.”

But during the April 8 eclipse, the moon actually appeared significantly larger than the sun, Filippenko said.

Filippenko also told us the image in the April 10 Facebook post could be a composite photo of several previous eclipses, but not of the April 8 eclipse or any single eclipse.

Editor’s note:  FactCheck.org  is one of several organizations  working with Facebook  to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found  here . Facebook has  no control  over our editorial content.

Bernstein, Gary. Professor of astronomy and astrophysics, University of Pennsylvania. Email to FactCheck.org. 15 Apr 2024.

Dunn, Marcia. “ Total solar eclipse wows North America. Clouds part just in time for most .” Associated Press. 9 Apr 2024.

Filippenko, Alexei. Professor of astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. Email to FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2024.

NASA. “ Baily’s Beads .” 5 Oct 2017.

NASA. “ NASA Eclipse Science .” Accessed 16 Apr 2024.

NASA. “ Total Solar Eclipse FAQs .” Accessed 16 Apr 2024.

National Solar Observatory. Spokesperson’s email to FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2024.

Strickland, Ashley, et al. “ Total solar eclipse: Where and when it was most visible. ” CNN. 8 Apr 2024.

Opinion: Mistakes and misconduct in science are not synonymous; there are remedies for both

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Brenner is a physician-scientist and president and chief executive officer of Sanford Burnham Prebys and lives in La Jolla.

From climate change to vaccines, science seems under attack everywhere on every topic, though often for reasons having little to do with actual research and evidence.

Science should always be questioned. That’s part of the process. But when people fundamentally and without consideration do not trust scientists, when they believe there are ulterior motives, we’re in trouble.

Feeding those suspicions are regular headlines reporting scientific fraud and misconduct. For as long as there has been science, there have been such cases, and we rightfully wring our hands when they come to light. But is this a time of crisis in science ethics? The answer, like science itself, is more complicated than blaring headlines.

In 2005, The New York Times described scientific fraud a “global trend.” A review of biomedical and life science research articles published between 1973 and 2012 noted more than 2,000 papers had been retracted, but less than one-quarter for technical errors. The majority were primarily pulled for fraud or suspected fraud, duplicate publication, or plagiarism.

Scientific journals, universities and research institutions have long struggled to effectively combat fraud, with mixed results. Many of the revelations leading to retractions of published work are the result of independent sleuths or enterprises. PubPeer is a website self-described as an “online journal club” where mostly anonymous investigators cull published data for scientific errors or dubious conclusions, from too-small sample sizes and bias to doctored or misleading images.

Sometimes the detected offense is fraud, which should be dealt with accordingly. At other times, researchers are taken to task for unintentional errors or findings that were, when published, the best thinking.

Should scientists be responsible for all research they’ve conducted or published under their name? It sounds reasonable, but it’s counterproductive. I have published or authored more than 300 scientific papers, articles, reviews and chapters in books. Do I “own” those findings forever? Am I obliged to correct and update them whenever possible?

Doing so might mean spending more time looking backward than forward. That’s not how science works. Like all researchers, my work is open to review, replication, correction and advancement (or dismissal) by others. New discoveries and technologies routinely upend older assumptions. That’s progress.

We should always be willing to correct mistakes in publications whenever they are detected, even if the papers and articles are many years old, and no longer represent current thinking.

To expect an older published manuscript to hold up to a state-of-the-art analysis sets an unfair standard. Researchers today have tools, technologies and knowledge that didn’t exist even a few years ago. Independent investigators need to exercise wisdom and context when considering the circumstances of older work — and still vigilantly maintain scientific integrity.

What are non-scientists supposed to make of these controversies and contretemps? It’s easy to simply ignore or dismiss them — and their relevance and benefits to society. Public trust in scientists and the belief that science has a positive effect on society has steadily declined in recent years, exacerbated by the politicized pandemic.

But that reflects a lack of critical thinking, which is, well, critical to our social well-being. More than ever, Americans need to be able to identify fact from fiction, to choose experts wisely and to draw valid conclusions from the same data, even when they do not conform to pre-existing biases.

Science isn’t about beliefs, intuition or gut feelings. It’s about empirical, verifiable facts. Sometimes those facts will later be proved incorrect with new data. That’s when minds must change along with the science.

Researchers make mistakes. Some even commit fraud. There are remedies which should be broadly and dispassionately pursued — and improved.

Research institutions can do better in monitoring and correcting science. We should provide our scientists with the analytical resources needed to interrogate their manuscripts prior to submission to a peer-reviewed journal, such as online databases of citations, text mining and artificial intelligence-driven technologies.

We should take all credible accusations of scientific error seriously and be willing to conduct independent investigations in response to concerns expressed by the scientific community.

It is a rare and hard-earned privilege to conduct research and we must hold ourselves to the highest standards. If non-scientists believe we are doing so, they can believe again in science.

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