Scientific biography was once an excessively deferential genre that presented the scientist as a heroic individual. Today biographers take an approach that embraces broader cultural influences and impacts, notes flaws as well as achievements and highlights the social and collaborative practice of modern science. Obituary writing is a short form with its own conventions, and choices to be made about what to include or exclude. As a writer who has worked in both genres, I will reflect on the particular challenges of writing obituaries of scientists who may not be household names but have materially changed our understanding of ourselves and the natural world.

Georgina Ferry is a science writer, author and broadcaster. She began as a staff editor and feature writer on New Scientist, and has presented science programmes on BBC Radio. Her biography of Britain’s only female Nobel-prizewinning scientist, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: Patterns, Proteins and Peace, was reissued by Bloomsbury in 2019. She has published several further books on 20th and 21st-century science. She edits obituaries for Nature and is a regular contributor of reviews, obituaries and features to The Guardian, Nature and The Lancet.

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