80 Scientific American, March 2020
RECOMMENDED
By Andrea Gawrylewski
JH PETE CARMICHAELGetty ImagesWhat Stars Are Made of:
The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
by Donovan Moore.
Harvard University Press, 2020 ($29.95)Overturning scientific dogma
is no easy thing—especially as
a marginalized minority. But
that is just what Cecilia Payne-
Gaposchkin did in the male-
dominated field of early 20th-century astronomy,
as detailed in this biography by journalist Moore.
Growing up in London, Payne-Gaposchkin trained
at the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory before
finally landing at the Harvard College Observatory.
There she analyzed spectral lines from stars for her
1925 doctoral thesis entitled “Stellar Atmospheres.”
Defying preexisting theories, which held that stars’
compositions would mirror that of Earth’s crust,
Payne-Gaposchkin’s studies showed hydrogen and
helium to be their main ingredients. Though initial-
ly dismissed by some of her prominent male peers,
her work was ultimately recognized as “the most
brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”How We Learn: Why Brains Learn
Better Than Any Machine... for Now
by Stanislas Dehaene. Viking, 2020 ($28)The act of learning, cognitive
psychologist Dehaene ex -
plains, is the construction of
internal models of the outside
world. Today the state of the
art in artificial intelligence still pales against the
powers of abstraction possessed by the human
brain. For ex ample, we—unlike most AI—can
recognize a “chair” whether it has four legs or
one or is made of metal or plastic. In this enlight-
ening examination of the brain’s power to learn,
Dehaene dispenses with the idea that the human
brain is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, arguing that
it comes preprogrammed by evo lution. Babies
are then like “budding scientists,” mak ing hypoth-
eses and gathering evidence to confirm or discard
them. Such insights inform De haene’s proposed
four “pillars” of learning, conditions that, if met,
may maximize a hu man’s—or a machine’s—
absorption of knowledge. — Tanya LewisThe Scientist and the Spy:
A True Story of China, the FBI,
and Industrial Espionage
by Mara Hvistendahl. Riverhead Books, 2020 ($28)
This story of international
espionage begins in the
unlikeliest of places—a corn-
field in Iowa. In 2011 police
caught three Chinese men
trespassing on a farm that was partly under con-
tract with agricultural giant Monsanto. The men
were planning to dig up proprietary seeds to send
back to China for reverse engineering—a scheme
that, if successful, could have allowed China to
reap huge profits from illegally duplicating Mon-
santo’s seed lines. Through skillful reporting,
journalist Hvistendahl details the dramatic FBI
investigation that followed, ultimately uncover-
ing far more than corn-seed theft: a U.S. federal
counterintelligence program intended to protect
intellectual property that racially profiled and
spied on ethnic Chinese scientists and students
living and working in the States. — Sunya Bhutta
Florida once came very close to losing its state animal. By the 1980s decades of hunting and rapid development had pushed the Florida panther—
the only subspecies of the North American cougar found east of the Mississippi River—perilously close to extinction. With a genial wit, journalist Pittman
chronicles the extended saga of a few of the dedicated scientists who fought to bring these elusive and majestic animals back from the brink. The story is
replete with interpersonal drama, lucky breaks, frustrating setbacks and bureaucratic decisions based on spurious science. Pittman’s tale would seem to
have a happy ending: Florida’s panthers have experienced a remarkable baby boom thanks to a controversial breeding program. But the big cat is not out
of the woods yet—it continues to lose habitat in a state where construction is often prioritized over conservation. — Andrea ThompsonC at Tale:
The Wild, Weird
Battle to Save
the Florida Panther
by Craig Pittman.
Hanover Square Press,
2020 ($27.99)POPULATION NUMBERS of Florida’s
panthers have been bouncing back, but
the cats are still rapidly losing habitat.© 2020 Scientific American