Scientists and/or mathematicians who became famous authors*

[KarlGauss]

I read an article the other day about the writer George Saunders (and the buzz his commencement speech generated). I was surprised, and impressed, to learn later that he was actually a trained geophysicist, or at least a geophysical engineer.

Saunders’ eclecticism made me wonder what other successful authors have started as scientists (or mathematicians). With a bit of thought, I came up with:

• the mathematician Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson)

• the biochemist Isaac Asimov (for his SF work, not for his popular accounts of science)

• Rostov University graduate in mathematics and physics Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

• Kurt Vonnegut (initially an engineering student)

• the astronomer/astrophysicist Carl Sagan (mostly for his novel ‘Contact’, but not for his other popular stuff like ‘Cosmos’)

I am sure that my short list above represents just the low-hanging fruit and that there must be many more examples. Can you add to the five I picked? (And, let’s exclude doctors. Sure, many are “scientists” but that’s not quite what I’m getting at. In any case, they would deserve their own thread).

*excluding autobiographies, memoirs, ‘popular’ expositions, and textbooks (so, for example, Feynman doesn’t make the grade by all four of these measures)

[After posting this, it occurred to me that a better title might have been "scientists or mathematicians best known for their literary achievements and not their scientific accomplishments]

[Ulfreida]

Well, there’s Blaise Pascal. Whom I read as a theological philosopher without even being aware of his massive contributions in mathematics, physics, and invention. This reflects very poorly on me but I am probably not the only one.

[Chronos]

Bill Amend, of the Foxtrot comic strip, was originally a physicist.

So is Lyndon Hardy, who wrote Master of the Five Magics, though I don’t know how famous he is.

[Prof.Pepperwinkle]

Tom Lehrer, mathematics professor, was also the singer/songwriter of a number of novelty songs for That Was The Week That Was back in the 1960’s. But he didn’t quit his day job.

[Hari_Seldon]

My former colleague Don Kingsbury wrote a couple of superb sci-fi novels, but is not well known. He studied mathematics and taught it as an instructor but never finished his PhD.

Fred Hoyle wrote a sci-fi novel, The Black Cloud, but is certainly best known as an astrophysicist.

[Senegoid]

@Prof.Pepperwinkle

Tom Lehrer, mathematics professor, was also the singer/songwriter of a number of novelty songs for That Was The Week That Was back in the 1960’s. But he didn’t quit his day job.

To be sure, one of his songs was a mathematics lesson (“New Math”), so that one doesn’t count by OP’s definition. But he did plenty of other songs too, even including a theological study of the Catholic Church (“Vatican Rag”). So he’s right up there with Blaise Pascal.

[Wendell_Wagner]

David Eagleman
David Brin
John G. Cramer
Camille Flammarion
Fred Hoyle
Patrick Moore
Stanley Schmidt
Rudy Rucker
Vernor Vinge
Gregory Benford

Calling Kurt Vonnegut an engineer is really stretching it.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Tom Lehrer’s career as a singer/songwriter began long before his career as a (part-time, mostly) mathematics professor. He was already writing songs and singing them in public while a college student in the 1940’s. He already had quite a cult reputation as a great song parodist in the early 1950’s. He didn’t get a regular job teaching math (and musical theater) at UC Santa Cruz until 1972 (if I remember correctly), well after the height of his singing career. That job was part-time and untenured, I believe. I presume that he took it just for a little extra money since the royalties from his songs weren’t enough to live on.

[robert_columbia]

Carl Sagan was a professor of Astronomy at Cornell, an astronomical researcher, and SF author, but he wasn’t very prolific as a fiction writer.

Does linguistics count? If so, J. R. R. Tolkien surely belongs on the list.

[Wendell_Wagner]

If we’re going to count people in humanities and social science fields, this is going to be a very long thread.

[Thudlow_Boink]

How about Omar Khayyam, the Persian mathematician and poet?
I suspect a substantial number of writers of relatively “hard” science fiction started out as scientists; some have already been mentioned.

[nearwildheaven]

@Chronos

Bill Amend, of the Foxtrot comic strip, was originally a physicist.

Didn’t know that! It does explain Jason and Marcus, however. Love that strip!

[nearwildheaven]

And veering way OT, how about Boston guitarist Tom Scholz, who has a master’s degree from MIT?

[Colibri]

Since this is about authors, Cafe Society may be a better fit.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[njtt]

@Hari_Seldon

Fred Hoyle wrote a sci-fi novel, The Black Cloud, but is certainly best known as an astrophysicist.

He wrote quite a few science fiction novels and co-wrote a TV series.

As is well known, astrophysicist Brian May was lead guitarist of Queen and is now leader of the badger women.

[KarlGauss]

@nearwildheaven

And veering way OT, how about Boston guitarist Tom Scholz, who has a master’s degree from MIT?

Then, to help hijack my own thread, I’d have to add Dolph Lundgren who has a masters degree in chemical engineering and was awarded a Fullbright scholarship to MIT. But I don’t think he’s a famous author (yet).

[KarlGauss]

@Colibri

Since this is about authors, Cafe Society may be a better fit.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

I wondered about that when I posted the OP.

Your call.

[Colibri]

@KarlGauss

[After posting this, it occurred to me that a better title might have been "scientists or mathematicians best known for their literary achievements and not their scientific accomplishments]

Vladimir Nabokov was a highly regarded entomologist with a number of technical publications. His interest in butterflies may have preceded his literary ambitions. Although an amateur, he made significant scientific contributions.

His career as an entomologist was equally distinguished. His interest in this field had been inspired by books of Maria Sibylla Merian he had found in the attic of his family’s country home in Vyra.[30] . . . . During the 1940s, as a research fellow in zoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribe Polyommatini of the family Lycaenidae, has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described the Karner Blue. The genus Nabokovia was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g. many species in the genera Madeleinea and Pseudolucia bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels).[31] In 1967, Nabokov commented: “The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.”[12]

The Karner Blue.

[Battle_Pope]

E.E. “Doc” Smith

He attended the University of Idaho. (Many years later he would be installed in the 1984 Class of the University of Idaho Alumni Hall of Fame.)[8] He entered its prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1914.

and

Smith earned his master’s degree in chemistry from the George Washington University in 1917, studying under Dr. Charles E. Munroe.[5][21][22] Smith completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering[17] in 1918,[23] with a food engineering focus; his dissertation, The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour, was published in 1919.

Wrote the Lensman and Skylark series.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

George Saunders may have a science degree, but he’s never really worked as a scientist. He was a tech writer at Radian. Same for Kurt Vonnegut. Neither achievement makes you a scientist. My wife has a geology degree and I’ve been a tech writer. So what? We’re not scientists under any meaningful definition.

Carl Djerassi is up there with Fred Hoyle as the most distinguished scientist to regularly write fiction. (The “regularly” eliminates Sagan.) When I get a chance I’ll check my shelves because I know there are others I can’t think of right now.

The list of sf writers with degrees is very long. Few had true careers as scientists. Eric Temple Bell was a mathematician who wrote under the name of John Taine. The astronomer Robert S. Richardson wrote as Philip Latham. G. Harry Stine worked in rocketry and wrote under his own name and as Lee Correy. Another real-life rocket science is Geoffrey Landis. Wendell has already mentioned some others.