ABSTRACT
Every investigation must begin with a bibliography, and end with a better bibliography.
George Sarton
Bibliographies are keys to the vast accumulations of literature that are con stantly growing, and can be compared with compasses guiding the traveller through unexplored regions. The objective may be clear, but the path tortuous, and much valuable material can be gleaned on the journey. Bibliographies devoted to scientific subjects are numerous but commonly embrace only history of science articles and monographs if they are written by historians rather than scientists. Although by no means the first historian of science, George Sarton (1884-1956), was the first to institutionalize and expand the subject academi cally} He was a humanist and positivist for whom science and technology were the engines of human progress. His approach to the subject was unmitigatingly bibliographical, as exemplified by his encyclopaedic Introduction to the History o f Science (3 vols in 5, Baltimore, 1927-48, reprinted Melbourne, Florida, 1975), which surveys the period from Homer down to 1400 and covers the Middle Ages, both East and West, in considerable detail. The importance of bibliography to the historian was underlined by Sarton in Horus. A Guide to the H istory o f Science (Waltham, MA, 1952) which remains an interesting and attractive portrait of the field as it existed in the early 1950s before the subject
was revolutionized by social historians. Since the 1970s a starting point for any research involving key figures in history of science has been the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (DSB) edited by Charles C. Gillispie, 16 volumes (including one index volume) (New York, 1980), with two further volumes on twentiethcentury scientists edited by Frederic L. Holmes (New York, 1981). All contributors were asked to cite existing bibliographies of scientists, or to provide guides where they did not exist. Although the results vary in quality, some (such as those for Euclid, Kepler and Pasteur) are first-class. In what follows only the most important single-author bibliographies will be mentioned. Historians of science themselves are the subject of a useful bibliography by S. A. Jaywardene and J. Lawes (1979), ‘Biographical notices of historians of science: a checklist’, Annals of Science, 36, 315-94.
