HOW do you make the stuff of science with all its messy data and tricky ideas palatable both for the practising scientist and the educated generalist? One interesting answer of late has been to sweeten the pill of hard science with a generous dash of good old-fashioned storytelling. In 1996, Dava Sobel’s Longitude set a pattern for heroic, historical tales and would-be Sobels appear each year. They’re beginning to look like a part-work approach to both science and history, but there’s no doubt that their narrative approach is still a huge success.
Someone who has pulled off the trick this…
