PD Smith

Suffer and survive

03 August 2007 | JS Haldane, pop science, Reviewing | 4 comments

I’ve just reviewed Mar­tin Good­man’s won­der­ful biog­ra­phy of J.S. Hal­dane for the Times. Here’s the first para­graph of the review:

‘Ear­ly one freez­ing Jan­u­ary morn­ing in 1896, a mas­sive explo­sion ripped through the Tylorstown Col­liery in the Rhond­da Val­ley. The force of the explo­sion blew the roof off pit­shaft num­ber 7 and sent a “black tor­na­do of dust up through the shafts”. A quick count of the miss­ing min­ers’ lamps sug­gest­ed that more than 100 men were below. In addi­tion, there were the boys, known as “the trap­pers”, employed to open and close the thick wood­en doors in the pitch-black tun­nels.’

Read the rest here.

4 comments so far:

  1. Angela Meyer | 03 August 2007

    Thank you for shar­ing this review. His meth­ods seem curi­ous and unortho­dox to us now but with­out sci­en­tists doing it ‘dirty’ like him, we would­n’t know half what we know today.

    Angela
    http://literaryminded.blogspot.com

  2. PD Smith | 04 August 2007

    “doing it dirty”…I like that phrase & I think Hal­dane would have liked it too! Cheers Angela

  3. Dr PR Lewis | 08 August 2007

    Hal­dane has always been a great hero to me, and inspired my own inves­ti­ga­tions in col­lieries. Some­one said of him that he had saved more lives than the whole of the med­ical pro­fes­sion put togeth­er, and the bio is a super trib­ute to his life and work.

  4. PD Smith | 09 August 2007

    Good to hear from you Dr Lewis. Yes, Hal­dane cer­tain­ly rich­ly deserves a biog­ra­phy and I think Good­man has done a very good job — despite what Lynne Truss said in the Sun­day Times.