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Reviews the book 'The Papers of Joseph Henry,' Volume 3: The Princeton Years 1836 and 1837, edited by Nathan Reingold.

Reviews the book 'The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Papers Nos. 1-3.'

Reviews the book 'Inventory of the Papers of Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943), Physicist and Nobel Prize Winner, c. 1877–1946,' by P.J.M. Velthhuys-Bechtold.

Reviews the book 'T.R. Malthus: The Unpublished Papers in the Collection of Kanto Gakuen University,' edited by John Pullen and Trevor Hughes Perry.

Doris Langley Moore, author of two widely-acclaimed books about Byron, has now written the first full biography of Ada Augusta, which is published by the firm of John Murray, Byron's own publisher and friend. Her excellent biography is based on a vast mass of documents, few of which have been published previously. Rather remarkably, she does not mention Bowden's pioneering studies. Fifteen portraits form a valuable part of the biography. The reader who studies this appalling family history will be likely to agree that, had it not been for Ada's 1843 paper on computer programming, the entire tribe of Byron's descendants and relatives throughout the 19th century should have been left mercifully in the oblivion which they so richly deserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Życie przecięte: Opowieści pokolenia Marca (Life Cut in Half: Stories From the March Generation)," by Joanna Wiszniewicz.

Biography, according to Thomas Carlyle, 'is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially biography of distinguished individuals'. Of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), it can truly be said that he was one such distinguished individual whose ability to combine pure science and technology placed him among the foremost of Victorian men of science and engineering. Not since S. P. Thompson's two-volume life-and-letters The life of William Thomson, Boron Kelvin of Largs (London: Macmillan, 1910) has there been a study of his life, and therefore it is with eager expectation that the student of Victorian science opens Sharlin's book. Although a high degree of selection is inevitable, and indeed desirable, in the treatment of an outstanding physicist whose intellectual life extended over a period longer than the entire reign of Queen Victoria, and whose works ran to over 660 published papers, Sharlin's account is distinctly superficial from several angles. While he has touched upon a large number of interesting and important aspects of Thomson's life and work, the biography has no sustained analysis of major themes. Furthermore, although the reader is constantly reminded of Thomson's undoubted genius and achievements, there are few real attempts to provide a solidly integrated study of the many and varied facets of his life. Let us therefore examine some of the defects in more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "A Russian Merchant's Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov, Based on His Diary," by David L. Ransel.

The article reviews the book "Dashkova: A Life of Influence and Exile," by Alexander Woronzoff-Dashkova.

A review of the book "Red Autobiographies: Initiating the Bolshevik Self," by Igal Halfin, as part of the "Donald W. Treadgold Studies on Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia" series, is presented.