Lab Girl

Hope Jahren

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Apr 5, 2016 - Biography & Autobiography - 304 pages

National Bestseller

“A beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.” —Barack Obama, via Facebook

 Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

A New York Times Notable Book

Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together. 

 
Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books 

Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award 

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - BookConcierge - LibraryThing

Hope Jahren was always most comfortable in a lab; as a child she played in her father’s lab. She chose to research botany, and this is her memoir. Jahren structures the book with alternating chapters ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - ecataldi - LibraryThing

Wow! I'm not a big science buff, but I ADORED this book. 75% memoir and 25% scientific; this unconventional book will win over everyone, not just scientists. Hope Jahren chronicles her journey in the ...

About the author

HOPE JAHREN is an award-winning scientist who has been pursuing independent research in paleobiology since 1996, when she completed her PhD at University of California Berkeley and began teaching and researching first at the Georgia Institute of Technology and then at Johns Hopkins University. She is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards and is one of four scientists, and the only woman, to have been awarded both of the Young Investigator Medals given within the Earth Sciences. She was a tenured professor at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu from 2008 to 2016, where she built the Isotope Geobiology Laboratories, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. She currently holds the J. Tuzo Wilson professorship at the University of Oslo, Norway.

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Bibliographic information

• Title: Lab Girl
• Author: Hope Jahren
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016
• ISBN: 1101874945, 9781101874943
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Nature / Plants / General; Science / Environmental Science