Resurrecting dead scientists

The Poisoner's Handbook, is out next week and in a recent interview I found myself trying to explain why I'm now writing about poison and murder when my last book was about supernatural research and the one before that about the biology of love and affection.

I know, it sounds like I have a short attention span. Usually I explain that these topics are all connected by my fascination with the way science and society intersect, the way science changes our world, the way our culture responds. But this time  I found myself replying: " I'm a really good friend to dead scientists."

This could be another way of saying that I've been spending too much time with the 1920s forensic scientists of my book. But I meant it differently. I've never been that drawn to celebrity scientists. But I really like unsung heroes - or rather I like to sing about them a little: the controversial, alcoholic, poetry-writing, obsessive psychologist Harry Harlow,  the subject of my 2002 book  Love at Goon Park, as an earlier example. When I was researching Harlow at the Archives of the History of American Psychology, I stumbled across a good dozen other scientists,  wonderfully smart and innovative in their time, lost to public memtory.

And Harlow was far better known that the two forensic scientists at the heart of The Poisoner's Handbook.  The story of Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler was mostly lost in New York City's municipal archive, stored in boxes covered with black dust, in the documents saved by their families. And yet they literally helped invent forensics in the United States, they were the CSI scientists of the Jazz Age era.

I hope to make people remember how remarkable they were.  It was never in my career plan - not I've ever had much of a career plan - but I think I'm right in that interview response. I've turned out to be a good friend to dead scientists.