"This is a book by a gifted, mature scholar who writes with real fluency and who makes arguments thickly rooted in relevant literatures and archives that matter to audiences in science, technology, and medicine studies; American studies; and gender and race studies."-Donna J. Haraway, History of Consciousness Department, University of California at Santa Cruz

"A smart and sophisticated exploration of the 'suffering scientist.' Suffering for Science embodies the best of what cultural history can do: use literary techniques to elucidate important historical questions. In this lively and readable text, I learned a great deal about something that has always perplexed me: how did the incredibly diverse labors of bacteriologists, explorers, astronomers, and even engineers, get unified under the singular, iconic idea of 'science'?"-Laura Briggs, associate professor of women's studies, University of Arizona

"Suffering for Science is an elegant treatment of motives that led to a scientific career in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. At one end of this period, doing science was advertised as form of asceticism; at the other, as fun. Herzig's intelligent book shows how this transition testifies to the meaning of modernity."-Steven Shapin, department of the history of science, Harvard University

From descriptions of gruesome self-experimentation to stories of exhausting theoretical calculations, examples abound of scientists willfully surrendering their personal well-being for the sake of knowledge. What accounts for the prevalence of this peculiar coupling of knowledge and pain-for the assumption that science requires suffering?

In this lucid and absorbing history of American science, Rebecca M. Herzig examines the rise of an ethic of "self-sacrifice" during the Gilded Age. Delving into some of the more bewildering practices in the history of science, she describes when and how science-the supposed standard of all things judicious and disinterested-came to rely on the curious paradigm of the enthralled investigator willing to endure extraordinary degrees of discomfort, pain, and even danger. Examples range from the serious X-ray scientist who could be identified by the radiation burns on her hand to the trustworthy polar explorer marked by his frostbitten toes. With attention to the shifting politics of race, sex, and nationhood, Herzig uses the figure of the suffering scientist as a unique lens through which to view the transformation of American life between the Civil War and First World War.

Written in elegant and engaging prose, Suffering for Science is about much more than the passion evident in many scientific vocations; it is about a nation's developing understanding of the purpose of suffering, the relationship between liberty and obligation, the limits of reason, and the nature of freedom in the aftermath of slavery.

Rebecca M. Herzig is an associate professor of women and gender studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Willing Captives
2 The Bonds of Science
3 Purists
4 Explorers
5 Martyrs
6 Barbarians
Epilogue: The Ends of Sacrifice
Notes
Bibliography
Index