A welcome look at some scientists whose names don't trip off the tongue like the Edisons, Darwins and Newtons – but still did work we could not operate these days without. We go from building pyramids five millennia ago, to scanning the world with GPS networks, and everywhere in between. The kinds of scientists involved might be considered second string ones in some minds – Wallace still inferior to Darwin, perhaps, and Leavitt forced to do the grunt work as opposed to Hubble – but they're wrongly thought lesser, and the fact we generally know little about some of them is partly due to the anti-woman, anti-black prejudices of old, or their social status. This fact does open the book up to charges of wokeness (and the comment that it's "unfortunate" that Plato, Socrates, Aristotle etc were male is just asinine), but that aside these are interesting little biographies, with dynamically-designed pages, and the book is a successful candidate for the school library shelf.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This is a great short guide for kids interested in science, or to show minority children that people like them can and have loved science before them. I appreciated the short introduction on science which will be great for those trying to inspire their children with a subject they have to study until they are 16 and it was amazing to see just how early there were women in scientific fields, specifically Hypatia from 334-415. This is complimented with some awesome illustrations that will likely make the book even more appealing to children.

Simply perfect, succinct, rich and absolutely beautifully and uniquely illustrated book about lesser known or appreciated heroes.
Informative, engaging and lovely to look at.
Will purchase a copy.