I'd love to like this list, but the problem I have is that some of the selections are great, and some don't seem to belong at all - or at least make it hard to figure out exactly where the women and the science are. To me that means women who are scientists and have done research, not just women who are somehow related to a science. (And I'm not talking about Henrietta Lacks, that book does need to be on many lists. I have in mind some of the fiction here.) For instance, in the plot summary of Double Helix, I don't see any women scientists. Atlas Shrugged is also a completely weird choice, as I've never heard anyone call Dagny Taggart a scientist (and I can't remember other women besides her, mainly because it was a book I never managed to finish). After reading the plots of a few others I just gave up on looking up more. Which is sad, because there are actually a lot of good books on women in the sciences out there. Written by Herself will definitely give you a better place to look further. (Also try here on wikipedia: Women in Science.)

Batgrl wrote: "I'd love to like this list, but the problem I have is that some of the selections are great, and some don't seem to belong at all - or at least make it hard to figure out exactly where the women an..."

I was trying to find books that talked about the women as people, instead of focusing solely on the science and only mentioning in passing that the researchers were women. I included any book where women seemed to have any aptitute for science or math, or books where they were doing things that would not be considered science today, but at the time would have been the closest pertinent topic such as alchemy or midwifery. While I realize many of these books are lacking in truly strong women scientist characters, when I realized how few books I knew of that did have such characters, I went back and added every book I could find in the hopes that other people would find this list and add more relevant books that they knew of.

As to the specific books that you mentioned, in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart is an engineer by training, and still uses engineering in her work throughout the book.

Double Helix talks about Rosalind Franklin serveral times. While most reviews say it is an unflattering description, I chose to include the book because I have not yet found any other books where she is included as a 3D actor in the events of DNA discovery.

I hope this clears some of the mire from this list, and if you have other books to recommend, I would love for you to add them.

I came off totally cranky there, didn't I? Sorry, it has nothing at all to do with you or this list really (sorry it came off that way) and everything to do with personal frustration in getting my hands on biographies. I've been searching for books about multiple women in science and it's ridiculously hard to track some down (many printed in 70s and then poof, that was it, they were out of print). And also totally stunning that there are a good number of famous women in science and yet the only books that seem to be in print are children's books. So yes, that was my frustration. I'd love recommend, for instance Women in Engineering: Pioneers and Trailblazers, and then give that a compare to Dagny Taggert's engineering experience (which you can kinda tell didn't thrill me) - but I can't seem to run it down locally. It's pricey because it's out via American Society of Civil Engineers - and like university press books, not many printed, and not a huge demand, usually only libraries have it that will specialize in that field. Bummer for the rest of us who just want to read it out of interest.

I do have a list, but the problem is that I've not read most of them, and I always hesitate with stuff like that. I'm dying to read a lot of them, but it's the prices (univerisity/special press = $30+ = ouch) that stop me.

I will totally come back and add some from my list that I've not read but look legit from the reviews so far, if you think that's ok. I'm totally shy about adding to a list someone else starts without asking.