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Biographical Research Methods

• Marta J. Eichsteller - University College Dublin
• Howard H. Davis - Bangor University, UK
• Description

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This book is a practical and thought-provoking account of the use of biographical methods in social science research. The case studies are useful for advanced students and researchers, and for anyone interested in how we tell stories about our lives.

An accessible and lively text, drawing on numerous examples to demonstrate biographical narrative research in action. The fascinating and complex world of biographical research is presented in a highly accessible way. Students and researchers will learn a great deal from reading this before embarking on research projects with any degree of biographical focus. 

Anchored in studies drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, Biographical Research Methods fills glaring gaps in the literature through balanced sympathetic consideration of a wide range of methodological approaches and its illumination of both established and innovative research techniques. 

Narrative research in social science has come a long way since its urban life heyday.  Biographical Research Methods takes this forward, deftly focusing on concepts and techniques for analyzing the contours of personal experience.  Outstanding is a view to the context-specific whats and processual hows of biographical construction.       

The book of Eichsteller and Davis is an extremely instructive and inviting guide for getting introduced into the social world of biography research. On the one hand, the book is an empirically grounded and unbiased “sociology of knowledge” of distinctive approaches in biography research). It lucidly contrasts different basic assumptions and their implications for concrete methodical guidelines and practical research activities. On the other hand, it is an integrative guideline for the whole arc of work in accomplishing the research act of unravelling the intimate relations between individual and society and for deciphering the features and problems of society and other collective entities as seen and experienced from the perspective of individual members of society and of other collective entities. -The book is written in an elegant and deliberate style of language and presentation; it makes you want to start your own practical research work in biography analysis.

A great, incremental, up-to-date, accessible, comprehensive research methods text for any novice or experienced qualitative researcher contemplating narrative/biographical methods. I personally found this text invaluable for my own PhD - thanks

A supplementary book but a must for those who write their dissertations with the use of Narrative Inquiry.

Preview this book

For instructors, select a purchasing option.

This title is also available on SAGE Research Methods , the ultimate digital methods library. If your library doesn’t have access, ask your librarian to start a trial .

Biographical Research: Getting Started

• Getting Started
• Reference Shelf
• Finding Books
• Finding Articles
• National, Political
• Literature, Science, Business, Social Science
• Religion, Race, Ethnicity, Gender
• Sports, Entertainment & Arts
• Time Period & Obituaries
• Primary Sources
• Internet Resources
• Citation & Writing Manuals
• Genealogy Books
• Genealogy Research Guide This link opens in a new window

Introduction

Before you start your research, check the correct spelling of the person’s name.

While you research, keep in mind that all sources can contain bias; the best biographical information will be signed by an author and will provide bibliographic citations for source material. Research Questions:

• What do you already know about the person?
• How much information do you want to find about the person?
• What is the person's profession or notoriety?
• How well known is the person?
• Is the person’s nationality, ethnic background, gender, or affiliation significant?
• Is the person living or deceased?  
• What dates are significant for this person?
• Do you want autobiography, memoir, or interviews in addition to biographical sources?

www.biography.com

Q:  How do I attribute biography.com when I use information from biographies on the site for a class project or for publication?

A:  Biography.com includes citation examples in multiple formats at the end of each lengthy biography.  

Subject Guide

Reference & Assessment Librarian

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• Biographical and Documentary Research (SIG #13)

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Finding Biographical Information

• Introduction and Resources of First Resort

Introduction

Resources of first resort.

• Research Approaches
• Biographical Dictionaries
• Book-length Biographies
• Periodical Articles/Obituaries
• Diaries/Autobiographies
• College/University Alumni/ae Biography
• Festschrifts
• Archival Sources
• Government Directories
• Local Histories
• Genealogical Sources
• Boston-Area Biography
• Asia, South & Central
• Asia, Southeast
• Australia/Pacific
• Europe: Regional & by Country, A-F
• Europe: H-N
• Europe: P-Z
• Mexico/Central America
• South America
• Russia/Central Asia
• Middle East
• North America/Canada

Please feel free to email us with questions. We can make an appointment for you to come in, and we can talk at length about your project.

• Fred Burchsted , ([email protected]) Research Librarian and Liaison to the Department of the History, Widener Library
• Anna Assogba , ([email protected]) Research Librarian, Lamont Library.

Book-length biographies are easily found in the HOLLIS Catalog , but short biographical articles are scattered widely in biographical dictionaries, subject encyclopedias and periodicals. 

Try the Resources of First Resort . If you don’t find what you need:

Numerous other biographical sources exist  We have listed some major examples, general and by gender, ethnicity, and occupation, on the Biographical Dictionaries page.

Many other specialized sources are listed on the pages of this guide.

Other Guides

Introductory Library Research Guide for History

Library Research Guide for Finding Manuscripts and Archival Collections

United States

Other Countries

To find individual encyclopedia articles in  HOLLIS : use Everything Advanced Search, do a Title search on your name and in the results list look for Resource Type under Refine Your Results in the right-hand column. Choose  Reference entries .  Example .

Current Biography Illustrated  (1946- ) includes biographical sketches and obituaries, with portraits, of persons deceased since 1946.

Gale In Context: Biography  (formerly Biography in Context) includes full text of many reference books, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Black Biography, Directory of American Scholars (10th (2002) ed.), Dictionary of American Biography, Marquis Who’s Who on the Web since 1985. The Biographical Facts Search allows search by occupation, nationality, ethnicity (African-American, Asian- American, Hispanic- American, Native- American only), gender, birth/death year, and place. Available to Massachusetts residents via the State Library of Massachusetts.

Marquis Who’s Who  includes all biographies in the 24 Marquis Who's Who print titles since 1985, together with all biographies from  Who Was Who in America, 1607–1985 .

Notable American women . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971-2004. 5 v. LOCATION: Widener: RR 1711. 34 --Covers women deceased before 1999. Articles include extensive source lists giving particular attention to unpublished sources. Classified index (by field) in each vol. Vols. 1-4 indexed in Biography and genealogy master index. Full text in  Women and Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000

World Biographical Information System  includes full text of thousands of biographical dictionaries accessible by name of biographee. Largely online full text, partly microfiche or print.  What to do if a biographical article is not available online and further information .

World Who’s Who

Thousands of works of collective biography and many biographical periodical articles are indexed in a few general biographical indexes which are listed below. These are not full text; one must do HOLLIS searches for retrieved sources.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index  indexes thousands of English-language biographical dictionaries and other compendia, many more than Biography Resource Center. Includes  Biography Index , which indexes biographical periodical articles as well as collective biography.  Indexes Contemporary Authors and Dictionary of Literary Biography .

IBN: Index bio-bibliographicus notorum hominum . Online Version LOCATION: Widener: RR 1501.15 --Indexes 2000 biographical dictionaries and related works, including non-European publications, published through the 1960s. Gives names, dates, nationalities, and occupations in addition to references to the indexed biographical works, listed in volumes labeled "Key to Sources". Currently extends only to Reulbach, Bernhard. -- ​The online version does not include well-known persons with numerous entries and book-length biographies.

Internationale Personalbibliographie , by Max Arnim. 2nd ed. Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann, 1952-1987. LOCATION: Widener: RR 1501.7 Library has: 5 Bd. --v. 1-2: 1800-1943; v. 3-5: 1944-1959. --Indexes biographical dictionaries and many scholarly/scientific journals.

American National Biography

African American national biography , ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham. NY: Oxford University Press, 2013, 12 v. Andover-Harv. Theol | Ref. | E185.96 .A4466 2008 (1st ed.) Lamont | REFERENCE | E185.96 .A4466 2008 (1st ed.) Widener RR 4781.60 (2nd ed.; 2013) Online version  (Continuously updated)

Canadian biography , part of the Library and Archives Canada site, contains the  Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Biography Literature (1962-2016) China. In Chinese

Germany and German-speaking

Deutsche biographie

Deutsche biographische Enzyklopädie online  Online version is more up-to-date than print. Print version: Widener: RR 1786.5

English version: Dictionary of German biography . München: K.G. Saur, 2001-2006. 10 v. Widener: WID-LC CT759 .D4813 2001x

Datenbank Schriftstellerinnen in Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz 1945-2008

Biographische Nachschlagewerke . List of sources with links to full text

Women writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland : an annotated bio-bibliographical guide , ed. by Elke Frederiksen. NY: Greenwood Press, 1989, 323 p. Schlesinger | Harvard Depository | 016.83 F852w Widener | Harvard Depository | PT167.Z99 W66 x, 1989

Dictionary of Irish biography  

Netherlands

Biografisch Portaal van Nederland

Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland (BWN)

Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (DVN) (Online Dictionary of Dutch Women)

South Africa

Dictionary of South African biography . Cape Town: Published for the National Council for Social Research, Dept. of Higher Education by Nasionale Boekhandel, 1968-1987. 5 v. Widener | Afr 8055.50 103554

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  (UK)

A biographical encyclopedia of early modern Englishwomen: exemplary lives and memorable acts, 1500-1650 , ed. by Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, and Jo Eldridge Carney. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017, 630 pages : HOLLIS Record

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• Last Updated: Aug 25, 2023 10:09 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/biography

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Biographical Research Methods

• Marta J. Eichsteller - University College Dublin
• Howard H. Davis - Bangor University, UK
• Description

This book is a practical and thought-provoking account of the use of biographical methods in social science research. The case studies are useful for advanced students and researchers, and for anyone interested in how we tell stories about our lives.

An accessible and lively text, drawing on numerous examples to demonstrate biographical narrative research in action. The fascinating and complex world of biographical research is presented in a highly accessible way. Students and researchers will learn a great deal from reading this before embarking on research projects with any degree of biographical focus. 

Anchored in studies drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, Biographical Research Methods fills glaring gaps in the literature through balanced sympathetic consideration of a wide range of methodological approaches and its illumination of both established and innovative research techniques. 

Narrative research in social science has come a long way since its urban life heyday.  Biographical Research Methods takes this forward, deftly focusing on concepts and techniques for analyzing the contours of personal experience.  Outstanding is a view to the context-specific whats and processual hows of biographical construction.       

The book of Eichsteller and Davis is an extremely instructive and inviting guide for getting introduced into the social world of biography research. On the one hand, the book is an empirically grounded and unbiased “sociology of knowledge” of distinctive approaches in biography research). It lucidly contrasts different basic assumptions and their implications for concrete methodical guidelines and practical research activities. On the other hand, it is an integrative guideline for the whole arc of work in accomplishing the research act of unravelling the intimate relations between individual and society and for deciphering the features and problems of society and other collective entities as seen and experienced from the perspective of individual members of society and of other collective entities. -The book is written in an elegant and deliberate style of language and presentation; it makes you want to start your own practical research work in biography analysis.

A great, incremental, up-to-date, accessible, comprehensive research methods text for any novice or experienced qualitative researcher contemplating narrative/biographical methods. I personally found this text invaluable for my own PhD - thanks

A supplementary book but a must for those who write their dissertations with the use of Narrative Inquiry.

Preview this book

For instructors, select a purchasing option.

• Electronic Order Options VitalSource Amazon Kindle Google Play eBooks.com Kobo

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Libraries | Research Guides

Biographical information.

• Biographical Sources
• Searching for Biographical Sources in NUsearch

Biographical resources

• Online resources
• Print resources
• American National Biography This link opens in a new window There is no need to sign in at website to access this resource. Begin searching or browsing for articles. The American National Biography is the premier, authoritative, historical biographical encyclopedia for the United States. Over 18,700 men and women are included, and the resource is updated quarterly with new entries and revisions of previously published entries to enhance their accuracy and currency. Articles are by established scholars. Living individuals are not included.
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provides biographies of over 50,000 individuals worldwide who have shaped the history of the British Isles. Access restricted to 3 simultaneous users at a time.
• Gale in Context: Biography This link opens in a new window Gale In Context: Biography is an engaging online experience for those seeking contextual information on the world's most influential people. Biography merges Gale's authoritative reference content with periodicals and multimedia organized into a user-friendly portal experience while allowing users to search for people based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender as well as keyword and full text.
• Current Biography Illustrated This link opens in a new window Current Biography Illustrated contains profiles of individuals living at the time of publication, often at the height of, or even the beginning of, their fame or notoriety. Occasionally a revised biography will be published, and a brief obituary, but published biographies are never revised in light of later events, so a useful source for seeing how individuals were perceived at the time they were active. Illustrations for most individuals are included.
• Chambers Biographical Dictionary International and historical coverage of all areas of human achievement including the arts, science, technology, sport, politics, philosophy and business.
• World Biographical Information System WBIS This link opens in a new window Over 3.6 million short biographical entries for individuals who lived across the world from ancient times to the present. Includes full text images of the original sources, usually older biographical dictionaries. Especially valuable for locating information on hard-to-find individuals from the past.
• Almanac of American Politics Includes profiles of every member of Congress and every governor. It offers in-depth and completely up-to-date narrative profiles of all 50 states and 435 House districts.
• African American Biographical Database This link opens in a new window From July 1, 2023 AABD became a component of ProQuest Black Studies Center. Biographical sketches and essays on African Americans from 1790 to 1950. The Database corresponds to the printed Black Biographical Dictionaries. These sketches have been assembled from biographical dictionaries, yearbooks, directories, histories, personal accounts, and other published sources. The full text of 300 rare books is displayed and searchable in page images, intact with images and illustrations.
• Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Provides information on the history of science through articles on the professional lives of scientists. Covers all periods of science from classical antiquity to modern times.
• Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analayses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers more than 120,000 novelists, essayist, poets, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied authors. Includes links to: Dictionary of literary biography, Contemporary authors, Contemporary literary criticism, and more.
• Palgrave MacMillan Dictionary of Women’s Biography Biographical information about women: historical, current, and worldwide.

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• Last Updated: Jul 7, 2023 1:49 PM
• URL: https://libguides.northwestern.edu/biographical

Biography Research Guide: Overview

• Free Biography Sites
• Biography as a Literary Form

Why Use Biography Online Resources

If you've ever searched for biographical material on the internet, you know that your search engine results are usually short, duplicate the same pages over and over, and they do not cite any published material to verify the information.

Search the specialized sources listed here for reliable biographical information.

WSU Databases

• Biography (Gale In Context) Huge collection of biographies on over 525,000 people worldwide. Includes full text articles from hundreds of periodicals, including the full text of standard reference titles such as: Webster's Biographical Dictionary, Encyclopedia of World Biography (28 vols.), Dictionary of American Biography (20 vols.), Newsmakers, and more. Note: Access to the Gale/Cengage databases is made possible by the Massachusetts Regional Library System.
• Brittanica Academic - Biography Information from the encyclopedia, plus links to selected web sites.
• Current Biography Entire contents of the printed monthly issues, since 1940 a trusted source in libraries. Contains carefully researched profiles of people in the news including politicians, sports figures, businesspeople, writers, actors, scientists and celebrities. Substantial profiles between 2,000-5,000 words; short bibliography follows each entry. Print volumes from 1940 - 2006 are shelved in the Reference collection on the 2nd floor: Ref/CT100/C8
• LexisNexis Academic - Biographical Information Search Best for recent personalities; full-text biographical articles culled from journals, magazines and newspapers. Under Subject Search, Select Biographical Information.
• Literature Resource Center - Authors Full text biographies of literary figures
• Master File Premier - [Ebsco] This database provides full-text access to over 84,000 biographies on people from all professions, countries, and time periods. Click on Advanced Search and enter the person's name in the search box - then scroll down and limit the Publication Type to Biography.
• Oxford Art Online - Biographies This database includes the full text of the Grove Dictionary of Art, which includes biographies of artists from antiquity through the present.
• Oxford Reference Online - [Premium Collection] This collection includes biographies taken from several hundred reference sources. It is strongest in history and the humanities. After running a Quick Search on a person's name, click the Subject Reference: Longer Entries tab [upper left corner of the screen] to view more the more substantive entries.

Subject Guide

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• Last Updated: Jun 30, 2021 11:21 AM
• URL: https://libguides.worcester.edu/biog

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Princeton University Library

Scientist spotlight biography resources, biographical sources - current.

• Biographical Sources - Historic

Living scientists may not have much formally published biographies so you will have to create their biographical sketches based on other information sources. In addition to their guidelines on Reliable Sources , Wikipedia also has guidelines for Biographies of living persons , with three core content policies. Content on living persons should always be

• written from a neutral point of view
• not original research.

To reduce random Googling, the following types of sources are generally considered reliable and verifiable

• Institutional Faculty Websites - can often be found by Googling faculty's name and institution
• Wikipedia - check the sources they are using
• ORCI D - Persistent research identifier. If faculty are using will have biographical details like degrees and instituttions
• Google Scholar Profile
• Videos of colloquium, presentations, lectures, etc.
• Scientist's own social media - LinkedIn

Search Articles+ (all content)

Search articles+.

Search in Articles+ to get newspaper articles, popular science, and peer reviewed journal articles by and about an author all in one place.

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• Last Updated: Dec 27, 2023 11:36 AM
• URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/spotlight

Biographical Resources: A Research Guide: National and International Biographies

• Introduction
• National and International Biographies
• Biographical Indexes
• K. G. Saur Indexes & Microfiche
• Subject Biographies
• Dissertations and Theses
• Research Help

International Biographies

• Dictionary of World Biography 5th edition, JSTOR ebooks; online only; open access Comprehensive, short-entry articles about persons worldwide throughout history, both living and dead. Part of the ANU Lives Series in Biography, an initiative of the National Centre for Biography in the History Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. The National Centre was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Dictionary of African Biography Oxford, 2012. "From the pharaohs to Frantz Fanon, Dictionary of African Biography provides a comprehensive overview of the lives of the men and women who shaped Africa’s history." --Publisher's description
• Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography Oxford, 2016. Online only. "a comprehensive overview of the lives of Caribbeans and Afro-Latin Americans who are historically significant..., unprecedented in scale, covering the entire Caribbean, and the Afro-descended populations throughout Latin America, including people who spoke and wrote Creole, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish."
• Visual History Archive [of the USC Shoah Foundation]. [Los Angeles, CA]: USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education; online only. Contains more than 54,000 audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide, recorded in 63 countries and in 40 languages since 1994. Most testimonies have been terminologically indexed at one-minute segments. Aside from Holocaust testimony, the resource includes (as of 20 July 2018) testimonies from the Armenian Genocide (1915-23), the Nanjing (China) Massacre (1937), the Cambodian Genocide (1975-79), the Guatemalan Genocide (1978-83), the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and ongoing conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Also included are testimonies about contemporary acts of violence against Jews.

National Biographies

These national biographies cover persons no longer living who were prominent in the history of that country (often including its colonial extensions). For exact coverage dates and information on other criteria for inclusion, see the front matter of the individual title. Online versions are regularly updated with new entries.

• American National Biography. Online version of the standard national biography of the United States. Profiles of more than 23,000 notable American women and men from all eras of U.S. history who are no longer alive. The ANB Online features thousands of illustrations, thousands of hyperlinked cross-references, links to select web sites, and archival sources. Articles are updated and added regularly. The ANB supersedes the Dictionary of American Biography, the previous standard national biography of the United States. For persons not listed in the ANB, check the less authoritative, older National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (Call number: Olin Reference, CT 213 .N27) and the K. G. Saur index and microfiche collection of biographical dictionaries.
• African American National Biography Entries integrated into the Biography section of the Oxford African American Studies Center . "Covering African American life for almost five centuries, from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1528 to notable black citizens of the present day, this major reference project collects and resurrects the lives of over 5,000 African Americans." [Introduction] New biographies added regularly.
• The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography Berkshire, 2014. "In 135 entries, written by some of the world's leading China scholars, the Dictionary takes the reader from the important figures of ancient China to Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping." [catalog summary]
• Diccionario Biográfico Español . 50 volumes. Call Number: Library Annex CT 1343 .D52 2009 Publication Date: 2009-2013 The premier biographical dictionary of Spain.
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography. online version of the standard Canadian national biography. Full coverage for individuals who played an important role in the formation of what is now Canada who died between the years 1000 and 1930 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years. Additional biographies cover 1940 to 2000. Annotated bibliographies include substantial listings of archival collections.
• Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie . 12 volumes. Call Number: Olin Library Reference CT 759 .D48 1995 For an more extensive version of German biography, available online, see Elektronische Allgemeine deutsche Biographie , below. See also Deutsches Biographisches Archiv from K.G. Saur.
• Dictionary of German Biography . 10 volumes. by Walther Killy; Rudolf Vierhaus; Dietrich von Engelhardt Call Number: Olin Library Reference CT 759 .D48 2001 Publication Date: 2001 - 2006 München: K.G. Saur. We also have the German language edition. See above.
• Dictionary of Irish Biography. Contains over 9,000 signed biographical articles on the careers of Irish men and women who made a significant contribution from the earliest times to the year 2010 in Ireland and abroad in all fields of endeavor. Also includes articles on people born outside Ireland who had noteworthy careers in Ireland. Articles may be searched by name, gender, birth or death place, birth or death dates, religion, occupation, contributor, or keywords. Articles will be added each year to cover people who died since the previous update.
• Elektronische Allgemeine deutsche Biographie: Herausgegeben von der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Also known as Deutsche Biographie. Searchable database for Allgemeine deutsche biographie (ADB) and Neue deutsche Biographie (NDB). "Certified information on more than 730.000 personalities and families in the German speaking areas from the Middle Ages to the present; namely 50.000 biographies (ADB and NDB) and links to more than 230 online resources (literature, dictionaries, source editions etc.)." [database home page]
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. A continuously updated online version of the standard British national biography which was originally published from 1885-1901 in 66 volumes and updated with decennial supplements. Over 50,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2000 (newer entries in the online version). Portraits and citations to archival collections and major biographies of the subject. See also K. G. Saur index and microfiche.

Other National Biographies

• Australian Dictionary of Biography . Online . Print volumes through volume 18 (1981-1990): Library Annex CT 2801 .A93. Online version covers persons who died through 1995. Entries for persons who died from 1996 to 2000 is currently in progress.
• Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland . 4 volumes. Call Number: Olin Library Stacks CT 1143 .B61 Publication Date: 1979-1994
• Chinese Lives: The people Who Made a Civilization . Call Number: Kroch Asia Reference DS 734 .M35 2013 Publication Date: 2013 Biographical work for major persons in Chinese history. Description from the catalog record .
• Dictionnaire de Biographie Française . Call Number: Olin Library Stacks Oversize CT 143 .D55 Publication Date: 1933 to date. 22 volumes so far.
• Dizionario Biografico degli Italiana . 100 volumes so far. Call Number: Library Annex CT 163 .D62 Publication Date: 1960 to date. Names covered in each volume .
• Polski Slownik Biograficzny . Call Number: Olin Library Reference CT 1230 .P76 Publication Date: 1935 to date. 54 volumes so far. Names covered in each volume .

Reference Help

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• Last Updated: Apr 25, 2024 4:28 PM
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University of Hawai'i Press

Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

Editors: Craig Howes, Cynthia Franklin, L. Ayu Saraswati, John Zuern, Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i.

Individual Subscriptions

Institutional subscriptions, additional information.

For over forty years, Biography has been an important forum for well-considered biographical scholarship. It features stimulating articles that explore the theoretical, generic, historical, and cultural dimensions of life writing; and the integration of literature, history, the arts, and the social sciences as they relate to biography. Each issue also offers insightful reviews, concise excerpts of reviews published elsewhere, an annual bibliography of works about biography, and listings of upcoming events, calls for papers, and news from the field.

Subscribe to the digital edition to gain access to the complete content on Project MUSE .

This journal is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ).

Sponsor:  Center for Biographical Research , University of Hawai‘i

Book Series: Biography Monographs

Read Online:

• Editorial Board

Cynthia G. Franklin , Center for Biographical Research ( CBR ), University of Hawai‘i

Craig Howes , Center for Biographical Research ( CBR ), University of Hawai‘i

L. Ayu Saraswati , Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Hawaiʻi 

John David Zuern , Center for Biographical Research ( CBR ), University of Hawai‘i

Managing Editor

Paige Rasmussen, University of Hawai‘i

Book Review Editor

Caroline Zuckerman, University of Hawaiʻi

• Recent Articles

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Micro Life in Macro History: The Year in China Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Vientos de cambio: El año en Colombia / Winds of Change: The Year in Colombia Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Did We Forget about Climate Change during the COVID-19 Pandemic? The Year in Denmark Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

The Visible and Invisible Lives of Kerstin Söderholm: The Year in Finland Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Love's Labour's Regained: The Year in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Responsibility and Confronting the Holocaust in Memoir: The Year in Hungary Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

The Maiden and the Patriarchy in Hlín Agnarsdóttir's Meydómur: The Year in Iceland Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

What Lies Beneath: The Year in Ireland Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Gino Strada, An Italian Hero for World Medicine: The Year in Italy Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Unfinished Bildungsroman: The Year in Korea Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Autobiographical Verse, Demythologizing Motherhood: The Year in Lebanon Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

La lucha de todas: El año en México / The Struggle Belongs to All: The Year in Mexico Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

A New Portrait of William of Orange: The Year in the Netherlands Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

The War Diary of Józef Czapski: The Year in Poland Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Between Inter-Imperial Pasts and the Neoliberal Present: The Year in Romania Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: The Year in Sint Maarten Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Collaboration and Testimony in Hermanito: The Year in Spain Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Outlandish: The Year in the UK Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

Desperation, Revenge, and Memoir: The Year in the US Posted on Wednesday January 17, 2024

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• Author Guidelines

Unsolicited submissions to Biography are welcome. Texts should be double-spaced and approximately 5,000 to 10,000 words in length, including bibliography and endnotes. Biography is now using the eighth edition of the Modern Language Association (MLA) reference and works cited system. Authors are welcome to submit their essays to Biography following MLA’s guidelines, or they can use another style and reference system with which they are more comfortable. Please include a 50-word abstract and a biographical note of one or two sentences. All copyrights are held by the Biographical Research Center unless other arrangements are agreed upon.

Biography follows a policy of double-anonymous submissions . Authors should email their essays to [email protected] without their names appearing anywhere on or in the document. Until a final decision is reached, the identity of the author will not be revealed to outside readers or our acquisition editors.

If an author is unable to anonymize their work without significantly interfering with their argument , they ought to include in a cover note to the managing editor with the submission a message stating that anonymizing the text was not possible. Biography will not be able to conduct double-anonymous peer review for these texts under these circumstances, but the managing editor will maintain a single-anonymous review, where the names of the text’s readers will be protected.

Inquiries are welcome. Please address questions about book reviews to our Book Review editor, Caroline Zuckerman at [email protected] .

Send all editorial correspondence to Biography via the following: Email:  [email protected]

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Articles appearing in Biography are indexed and/or abstracted in:

Canada in Context, 09/1981-

Clarivate Analytics– Arts & Humanities Citation Index Current Contents Web of Science

De Gruyter Saur– Dietrich’s Index Philosophicus IBZ – Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur

EBSCOhost– Academic Search Alumni Edition, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Complete, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Elite, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Premier, 1/1/2001- Academic Search: Main Edition, 1/1/2001- Advanced Placement Source, 1/1/2001- America: History and Life, 1/1/1978- Current Abstracts, 1/1/2001- Historical Abstracts (Online), 1/1/1978- Literary Reference Center, 1/1/2001- Literary Reference Center Plus, 1/1/2001- Literary Reference Center: Main Edition, 10/1/2004- MainFile, 1/1/2001- MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Poetry & Short Story Reference Center, 1/1/2001- TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 1/1/2001-

Elsevier BV– Scopus, 1999-, 1986-1988, 1984, 1980-1982, 1978

Gale– Academic OneFile, 01/2000- Advanced Placement Fine Arts and Music, 09/1981- Book Review Index Plus CPI.Q (Canadian Periodical Index), 01/2000- Expanded Academic ASAP, 12/2000- Fine Arts and Music Collection, 09/1981- General OneFile, 01/2000- General Reference Center, 09/1981- General Reference Center Gold, 09/1981- General Reference Centre International, 9/1981- InfoTrac Custom, 12/2000- InfoTrac Junior Edition, 03/2012- InfoTrac Student Edition, 06/1985- MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Pop Culture Collection, 09/1981- Popular Magazines, 12/2000- Research In Context, 01/2000- Science in Context, 09/1981- Student Resources in Context, 09/1981-

National Periodical Library– Guide to Social Work, Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature (Online)

OCLC– ArticleFirst, vol.15, no.3, 1992-vol.34, no.2, 2011 Electronic Collections Online, vol.20, no.2, 1997-vol.34, no.2, 2011

ProQuest– Art, Design & Architecture Collection, 1/1/1996- Arts & Humanities Database, 1/1/1996- Arts Premium Collection, 1/1/1996- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Core Literary Journals Index Full Text MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Periodicals Index Online, 1/1/1978-10/1/2000 Professional ProQuest Central, 01/01/1996- ProQuest 5000, 01/01/1996- ProQuest Central, 1/1/1996- Research Library, 01/01/1996- STEM Database, 1/1/1996-

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Biographical Resources for the Sciences: Home

• Organizing Your Research
• Resources Within Specific Time Periods
• Geographically-Specialized Resources
• Field-Specialized Resources
• Other Collected Science Biographies
• Membership Directories or Listings
• Nobel Prize Winners
• Additional Library Resources on Famous Scientists
• Women in Science and Engineering at Yale 2020 Exhibit Bibliography

Welcome to the Science Biography Subject Guide. In this guide you'll find:

• links to online science biographical resources
• a list of paper sources for science biography by field
• a list of resources on Nobel Prize Laureates
• a list of sources for geographically-specialized entries
• links, citations, and tips for finding resources related to science biography

Library Resources in Science Biography for Famous and Some Lesser-Known Scientists

This guide provides links, citations, and tips for finding resources related to science biography. 

Famous Scientists and broad coverage :

Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography - Features deceased scientists from ancient times through the 21st Century. Signed articles. Some portraits in black and white. Bibliographies. Index by specialty. Online version of Dictionary of Scientific Biography and New Dictionary of Scientific Biography.  Print editions held at Marx Library, Medical/Historical Library, and SML Starr Main Reference Room.

ORBIS - Online Catalog (books and journals in the Yale University Library System) To find biographies or autobiographies for an individual, enter the person's name in Orbis Advanced search keyword box. An example book is: Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian by EF Rivinius and EM Youssef. Library Shelving Facility QH31 B17 R58X For collective science biography enter a keyword search such as scientists biography or biologists biography. Some biographical indexes are also available which cover entries in collective science biography. These books may be found in Orbis by entering a keyword search such as science bio-bibliography indexes.

The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. 2 volumes Editors: Roy Porter and Marilyn Ogilvie. 3rd edition Helicon Publishing, c2000. Over 1280 biographies of men and women scientists, living and deceased, from throughout time.  International in scope. Fields covered include: astronomy, botany, biology, chemistry, cosmology, engineering, exploration, geology, mathematics, physics.  Bibliographies for further reading. LSF

Biographical Memoirs , National Academy of Sciences. - Many of these volumes are online through Orbis as well as online through the Academy. Portraits and life events and a selected bibliography for deceased members of the Academy. 1877-

World Biographical Information System . - Database from De Gruyter. Biographical information on > 6 million people starting from the 8th century B.C. to the end of the 20th century. Collects information from 30 biographical archives. Includes Johann Christian Poggendorff's Biographisch-Literarisches Handworterbuch der exakten Naturwissenschaften/Biographisch-Literarisches Handworterbuch zur Geschichte der exacten Wissenschaften. For deceased persons. International in scope and covering all fields. 

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How to Write a Good Academic Biography (Part 1)

When your journal article gets accepted or you are preparing for a public presentation, you will often be asked for a short academic biography. For many people, these academic bios are more difficult to write than a dissertation. How do you sum up yourself and your work in 3-5 sentences? What do you need to include? What should you leave out?

What You Should Do

• Start with your full name followed by your current position, your general interests, and your current project, keeping them all very brief.
• If you are within a year of receiving a prestigious award, mention that as well.
• Finally, finish with a sentence that’s personal: add a hobby, a pet’s name, the city you live in—whatever you are comfortable with that is personal but not too private.

What You Should Avoid

• Avoid speaking in the first person, i.e., don’t use “I.”
• Don’t divulge details beyond your current position.
• In a longer bio of multiple paragraphs, you may add more awards and information about your master’s and bachelor’s degrees, but not in a short bio. Moreover, don’t add anything that happened before grad school—including your place of birth. For example:

Hi! My name is Scott. I was originally born in Vermont and now I’m a professor at North Yankee University in Fargone, New York (in upstate New York). I study antelopes’ migration patterns and their impact of native grain growth. My interest in antelopes began as a teenager when I first saw one in the wild. I did my undergrad degree in biology at SUNY and my masters and UCLA and my PhD in Forestry at Hunter College.

Related: Finished drafting your academic biography and heading for an international conference? Check out this post now!

The above example is far too casual and Scott’s work and current position are overshadowed by all the other random details. This can be written in a much better way:

Scott Sampson is a professor of Wildlife Biology at North Yankee University. His work focuses specifically on the migration patterns of antelope and their impact on the growth of native grain. His favorite place to do research in his backyard, which opens to the Akron National Forest.

This improvised version is concise, relevant, and makes Scott’s bio appear professional while giving a short description of his personal details.

Longer Bios

For longer bios, follow the same basic rules, but go into a bit more depth about your work, your education, and your future projects or interests. You may also consider adding a line about your immediate family. But as always, leave the personal details for a short and friendly mention at the end of the bio.

Mostly, your bio will be used by someone to introduce you at a conference or public event so if you write your bio using these tips, you will help them give a smooth and accurate introduction. Remember that the bio is the first thing that people know about you so pack it full of the most important things about yourself!

If you would like to know more about different formats of academic biography, read the next article in this series!

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How to Write a Good Academic Biography (Part 2)

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How to Write a Biography: A 7-Step Guide [+Template]

From time to time, nonfiction authors become so captivated by a particular figure from either the present or the past, that they feel compelled to write an entire book about their life. Whether casting them as heroes or villains, there is an interesting quality in their humanity that compels these authors to revisit their life paths and write their story.

However, portraying someone’s life on paper in a comprehensive and engaging way requires solid preparation. If you’re looking to write a biography yourself, in this post we’ll share a step-by-step blueprint that you can follow. 

How to write a biography: 

1. Seek permission when possible 

2. research your subject thoroughly, 3. do interviews and visit locations, 4. organize your findings, 5. identify a central thesis, 6. write it using narrative elements, 7. get feedback and polish the text.

FREE RESOURCE

Biography Outline Template

Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.

While you technically don’t need permission to write about public figures (or deceased ones), that doesn't guarantee their legal team won't pursue legal action against you. Author Kitty Kelley was sued by Frank Sinatra before she even started to write His Way , a biography that paints Ol Blue Eyes in a controversial light. (Kelley ended up winning the lawsuit, however).  

Whenever feasible, advise the subject’s representatives of your intentions. If all goes according to plan, you’ll get a green light to proceed, or potentially an offer to collaborate. It's a matter of common sense; if someone were to write a book about you, you would likely want to know about it well prior to publication. So, make a sincere effort to reach out to their PR staff to negotiate an agreement or at least a mutual understanding of the scope of your project. 

At the same time, make sure that you still retain editorial control over the project, and not end up writing a puff piece that treats its protagonist like a saint or hero. No biography can ever be entirely objective, but you should always strive for a portrayal that closely aligns with facts and reality.

If you can’t get an answer from your subject, or you’re asked not to proceed forward, you can still accept the potential repercussions and write an unauthorized biography . The “rebellious act” of publishing without consent indeed makes for great marketing, though it’ll likely bring more headaches with it too. 

✋ Please note that, like other nonfiction books, if you intend to release your biography with a publishing house , you can put together a book proposal to send to them before you even write the book. If they like it enough, they might pay you an advance to write it.  

Book Proposal Template

Craft a professional pitch for your nonfiction book with our handy template.

Once you’ve settled (or not) the permission part, it’s time to dive deep into your character’s story.  

Deep and thorough research skills are the cornerstone of every biographer worth their salt. To paint a vivid and accurate portrait of someone's life, you’ll have to gather qualitative information from a wide range of reliable sources. 

Start with the information already available, from books on your subject to archival documents, then collect new ones firsthand by interviewing people or traveling to locations. 

Browse the web and library archives

Put your researcher hat on and start consuming any piece on your subject you can find, from their Wikipedia page to news articles, interviews, TV and radio appearances, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, magazines, and any other media outlets they may have been featured in. 

Establish a system to orderly collect the information you find 一 even seemingly insignificant details can prove valuable during the writing process, so be sure to save them. 

Depending on their era, you may find most of the information readily available online, or you may need to search through university libraries for older references. 

For his landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow spent untold hours at Columbia University’s library , reading through the Hamilton family papers, visiting the New York Historical Society, as well as interviewing the archivist of the New York Stock Exchange, and so on. The research process took years, but it certainly paid off. Chernow discovered that Hamilton created the first five securities originally traded on Wall Street. This finding, among others, revealed his significant contributions to shaping the current American financial and political systems, a legacy previously often overshadowed by other founding fathers. Today Alexander Hamilton is one of the best-selling biographies of all time, and it has become a cultural phenomenon with its own dedicated musical. 

Besides reading documents about your subject, research can help you understand the world that your subject lived in. 

Try to understand their time and social environment

Many biographies show how their protagonists have had a profound impact on society through their philosophical, artistic, or scientific contributions. But at the same time, it’s worth it as a biographer to make an effort to understand how their societal and historical context influenced their life’s path and work.

An interesting example is Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World . Finding himself limited by a lack of verified detail surrounding William Shakespeare's personal life, Greenblatt, instead, employs literary interpretation and imaginative reenactments to transport readers back to the Elizabethan era. The result is a vivid (though speculative) depiction of the playwright's life, enriching our understanding of his world.

Many readers enjoy biographies that transport them to a time and place, so exploring a historical period through the lens of a character can be entertaining in its own right. The Diary of Samuel Pepys became a classic not because people were enthralled by his life as an administrator, but rather from his meticulous and vivid documentation of everyday existence during the Restoration period.

Once you’ve gotten your hands on as many secondary sources as you can find, you’ll want to go hunting for stories first-hand from people who are (or were) close to your subject.

With all the material you’ve been through, by now you should already have a pretty good picture of your protagonist. But you’ll surely have some curiosities and missing dots in their character arc to figure out, which you can only get by interviewing primary sources.

Interview friends and associates

This part is more relevant if your subject is contemporary, and you can actually meet up or call with relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, or any other person related to them. 

In writing the popular biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson interviewed more than one hundred people, including Jobs’s family, colleagues, former college mates, business rivals, and the man himself.

🔍 Read other biographies to get a sense of what makes a great one. Check out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time , or take our 30-second quiz below for tips on which one you should read next. 

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When you conduct your interviews, make sure to record them with high quality audio you can revisit later. Then use tools like Otter.ai or Descript to transcribe them 一 it’ll save you countless hours. 

You can approach the interview with a specific set of questions, or follow your curiosity blindly, trying to uncover revealing stories and anecdotes about your subject. Whatever your method, author and biography editor Tom Bromley suggests that every interviewer arrives prepared, "Show that you’ve done your work. This will help to put the interviewee at ease, and get their best answers.” 

Bromley also places emphasis on the order in which you conduct interviews. “You may want to interview different members of the family or friends first, to get their perspective on something, and then go directly to the main interviewee. You'll be able to use that knowledge to ask sharper, more specific questions.” 

Finally, consider how much time you have with each interviewee. If you only have a 30-minute phone call with an important person, make it count by asking directly the most pressing questions you have. And, if you find a reliable source who is also particularly willing to help, conduct several interviews and ask them, if appropriate, to write a foreword as part of the book’s front matter .

Sometimes an important part of the process is packing your bags, getting on a plane, and personally visiting significant places in your character’s journey.

Visit significant places in their life

A place, whether that’s a city, a rural house, or a bodhi tree, can carry a particular energy that you can only truly experience by being there. In putting the pieces together about someone’s life, it may be useful to go visit where they grew up, or where other significant events of their lives happened. It will be easier to imagine what they experienced, and better tell their story. 

In researching The Lost City of Z , author David Grann embarked on a trek through the Amazon, retracing the steps of British explorer Percy Fawcett. This led Grann to develop new theories about the circumstances surrounding the explorer's disappearance.

Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with jaguars and anacondas to better understand your subject’s environment, but try to walk into their shoes as much as possible. 

Once you’ve researched your character enough, it’s time to put together all the puzzle pieces you collected so far. 

Take the bulk of notes, media, and other documents you’ve collected, and start to give them some order and structure. A simple way to do this is by creating a timeline. 

Create a chronological timeline

It helps to organize your notes chronologically 一 from childhood to the senior years, line up the most significant events of your subject’s life, including dates, places, names and other relevant bits. 

You should be able to divide their life into distinct periods, each with their unique events and significance. Based on that, you can start drafting an outline of the narrative you want to create.  

Draft a story outline 

Since a biography entails writing about a person’s entire life, it will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can pick where you want to end the story, depending on how consequential the last years of your subject were. But the nature of the work will give you a starting character arc to work with. 

To outline the story then, you could turn to the popular Three-Act Structure , which divides the narrative in three main parts. In a nutshell, you’ll want to make sure to have the following:

• Act 1. Setup : Introduce the protagonist's background and the turning points that set them on a path to achieve a goal. 
• Act 2. Confrontation : Describe the challenges they encounter, both internal and external, and how they rise to them. Then..
• Act 3. Resolution : Reach a climactic point in their story in which they succeed (or fail), showing how they (and the world around them) have changed as a result. 

Only one question remains before you begin writing: what will be the main focus of your biography?

Think about why you’re so drawn to your subject to dedicate years of your life to recounting their own. What aspect of their life do you want to highlight? Is it their evil nature, artistic genius, or visionary mindset? And what evidence have you got to back that up? Find a central thesis or focus to weave as the main thread throughout your narrative. 

Or find a unique angle

If you don’t have a particular theme to explore, finding a distinct angle on your subject’s story can also help you distinguish your work from other biographies or existing works on the same subject.

Plenty of biographies have been published about The Beatles 一 many of which have different focuses and approaches: 

• Philip Norman's Shout is sometimes regarded as leaning more towards a pro-Lennon and anti-McCartney stance, offering insights into the band's inner dynamics. 
• Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head closely examines their music track by track, shifting the focus back to McCartney as a primary creative force. 
• Craig Brown's One Two Three Four aims to capture their story through anecdotes, fan letters, diary entries, and interviews. 
• Mark Lewisohn's monumental three-volume biography, Tune In , stands as a testament to over a decade of meticulous research, chronicling every intricate detail of the Beatles' journey.

Finally, consider that biographies are often more than recounting the life of a person. Similar to how Dickens’ Great Expectations is not solely about a boy named Pip (but an examination and critique of Britain’s fickle, unforgiving class system), a biography should strive to illuminate a broader truth — be it social, political, or human — beyond the immediate subject of the book. 

Once you’ve identified your main focus or angle, it’s time to write a great story. 

While biographies are often highly informative, they do not have to be dry and purely expository in nature . You can play with storytelling elements to make it an engaging read. 

You could do that by thoroughly detailing the setting of the story , depicting the people involved in the story as fully-fledged characters , or using rising action and building to a climax when describing a particularly significant milestone of the subject’s life. 

One common way to make a biography interesting to read is starting on a strong foot…

Hook the reader from the start

Just because you're honoring your character's whole life doesn't mean you have to begin when they said their first word. Starting from the middle or end of their life can be more captivating as it introduces conflicts and stakes that shaped their journey.

When he wrote about Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild , author Jon Krakauer didn’t open his subject’s childhood and abusive family environment. Instead, the book begins with McCandless hitchhiking his way into the wilderness, and subsequently being discovered dead in an abandoned bus. By starting in medias res , Krakauer hooks the reader’s interest, before tracing back the causes and motivations that led McCandless to die alone in that bus in the first place.

You can bend the timeline to improve the reader’s reading experience throughout the rest of the story too…

Play with flashback 

While biographies tend to follow a chronological narrative, you can use flashbacks to tell brief stories or anecdotes when appropriate. For example, if you were telling the story of footballer Lionel Messi, before the climax of winning the World Cup with Argentina, you could recall when he was just 13 years old, giving an interview to a local newspaper, expressing his lifelong dream of playing for the national team. 

Used sparsely and intentionally, flashbacks can add more context to the story and keep the narrative interesting. Just like including dialogue does…

Reimagine conversations

Recreating conversations that your subject had with people around them is another effective way to color the story. Dialogue helps the reader imagine the story like a movie, providing a deeper sensory experience. 

One thing is trying to articulate the root of Steve Jobs’ obsession with product design, another would be to quote his father , teaching him how to build a fence when he was young: “You've got to make the back of the fence just as good looking as the front of the fence. Even though nobody will see it, you will know. And that will show that you're dedicated to making something perfect.”

Unlike memoirs and autobiographies, in which the author tells the story from their personal viewpoint and enjoys greater freedom to recall conversations, biographies require a commitment to facts. So, when recreating dialogue, try to quote directly from reliable sources like personal diaries, emails, and text messages. You could also use your interview scripts as an alternative to dialogue. As Tom Bromley suggests, “If you talk with a good amount of people, you can try to tell the story from their perspective, interweaving different segments and quoting the interviewees directly.”

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These are just some of the story elements you can use to make your biography more compelling. Once you’ve finished your manuscript, it’s a good idea to ask for feedback. 

If you’re going to self-publish your biography, you’ll have to polish it to professional standards. After leaving your work to rest for a while, look at it with fresh eyes and self-edit your manuscript eliminating passive voice, filler words, and redundant adverbs. 

Then, have a professional editor give you a general assessment. They’ll look at the structure and shape of your manuscript and tell you which parts need to be expanded on or cut. As someone who edited and commissioned several biographies, Tom Bromley points out that a professional “will look at the sources used and assess whether they back up the points made, or if more are needed. They would also look for context, and whether or not more background information is needed for the reader to understand the story fully. And they might check your facts, too.”  

In addition to structural editing, you may want to have someone copy-edit and proofread your work.

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Importantly, make sure to include a bibliography with a list of all the interviews, documents, and sources used in the writing process. You’ll have to compile it according to a manual of style, but you can easily create one by using tools like EasyBib . Once the text is nicely polished and typeset in your writing software , you can prepare for the publication process.  

In conclusion, by mixing storytelling elements with diligent research, you’ll be able to breathe life into a powerful biography that immerses readers in another individual’s life experience. Whether that’ll spark inspiration or controversy, remember you could have an important role in shaping their legacy 一 and that’s something not to take lightly. 

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BioProject Authors’ Guidelines

(Note to biographers: Some of the following requirements are numbered. You can use the numbers as a checklist, to make sure you have not overlooked any important details.)

Each biography should be informative, accurate, and entertaining. It should be evaluative but objective. (1) Avoid puffery.

The biographies should be between 1,500 and 4,000 words in length.  Shorter bios may be accepted if adequate information cannot be found. Any bio beyond 4,000 words must be pre-approved by the project leaders.

Biographies should cover the subject’s full life, including (2) pre- and (3) post-baseball life and career(s), parents’ (4) names, (5) heritage and (6) occupations, subject’s (7) education, (8) marriage(s), (9) children, (10) number of siblings (and something about them if significant)—whatever helps give a full picture of the subject.  Include in the text the subject’s (11) birth and death dates and places, and, for players—if you find these significant—(12) height and playing weight, and (13) batting and throwing arm.

Format: The title will give the subject’s name as commonly used (e.g. Ted Williams). The opening paragraph(s) should identify the subject, provide (14) the full name (e.g. Theodore Samuel Williams), and describe his/her baseball role/significance (and non-baseball significance if it rivals or overshadows the baseball role—e.g. Billy Sunday, Frank Olin).

Focusing on a single moment in the opening is typically not encouraged unless it is truly exceptional. An overarching view is preferable.

The remainder of the biography should trace the subject’s life chronologically, with evaluative commentary, telling quotes, and anecdotes/incidents that display the character, personality and significance of the subject.

Document (15) the source of every direct quote, (16) the source of uncommon information, and (17) every interpretation drawn from others. The authorities for the subject’s vital statistics and major league stats are Retrosheet.org and/or Baseball-reference.com. If your research leads you to differ from these authorities, (18) explain why in a note accompanying your bio.

It is not necessary to give the player’s statistics for each year of his career. Work from the knowledge that in most cases (except for Negro Leaguers, for example), the player’s full statistical line is available elsewhere. (19) There is generally no need to say that the player hit 26 home runs unless that total was interesting in some way (led his team, was a career high, etc.), in which case state the significance.

(20) Avoid plagiarism, which includes not only unattributed quotation but also extended paraphrase.

(21) Use endnotes to document your sources, inserted by means of the Microsoft Word reference tool. This will turn into a hyperlink when the biography is posted on the website.

For sources that are not covered in the endnotes, a list incorporating standard bibliographical data should follow the text. The list should include all books, dissertations, theses, chapters and major articles about the subject, and all other books, articles, Internet resources, etc. which include important treatment of the subject.

Your writing should conform to standard American English diction and usage, and to the SABR Style Guide .

Briefly stated, plagiarism is (a) using someone else’s words, ideas, and visual representations (like graphs, charts, diagrams and maps) without giving adequate credit to the source and (b) following too closely someone else’s pattern of expression or visual representation.

Some plagiarism is illegal — an infringement of copyright; ALL plagiarism violates scholarly ethics and, of course, violates SABR’s standards for its authors. As you doubtless know from your many years of schooling, plagiarism is the most serious of literary offenses. In many colleges, students who plagiarize are expelled; at all reputable newspapers, writers who plagiarize are fired.

Experience shows that much plagiarism is unintentional, the result either of carelessness or of an inadequate understanding of what plagiarism encompasses. Here are the three main “don’ts”):

• Do not copy another writer’s (or speaker’s) words without putting them in quotation marks and acknowledging the author. Anything beyond three or four ordinary words taken from another source require acknowledgement, as does usually every “significant” word. (Exception: well-known phrases from literature do not ordinarily require either quotation marks or acknowledgement. In the opening line to the Oakland A’s history in Total Baseball (first edition, 1989), author Fred Ivor-Campbell didn’t need to credit Charles Dickens for his literary borrowing; it was simply a turn on Dickens’s familiar opening to A Tale of Two Cities : “The history of the Athletics is a tale of three cities—a story of the best of teams and of the worst of teams.” But attempts at this kind of clever borrowing from literature are best used only rarely, if at all; very often it is only the writer who appreciates their cleverness.)
• Do not express another person’s significant ideas without acknowledging the source. The key here to the need for acknowledgement is the word “significant.” If an important idea or concept or way of thinking is original with someone else, give the originator credit. If you do not know the originator, then probably the idea has already entered into general knowledge, and it will be enough if you make it clear that it did not originate with you.Note: You do not need to credit the source of “common knowledge”: that is, information available in at least two reliable, reputable sources. Some examples: the winner of the 1933 World Series, and Duffy Lewis’s lifetime major league home runs, information you may not know off-hand, but could certainly find in a number of sources. The source of information that can be found only in one or two specialized sources, though — like Duffy Lewis’s lifetime MINOR league home runs — should be acknowledged, either in the text of the biography and/or in your list of sources that accompanies it.

Original: Here is the opening paragraph of Ivor-Campbell’s history of the Phillies in the first edition of Total Baseball :

It took the Phillies thirty-two years to win their first pennant, and ninety-seven to win their first world championship. They have finished last in their league or division twenty-seven times — more than one season in four.  In the nine years from 1975 through 1983, though, they were one of the most formidable teams in baseball.

Here are some acceptable and unacceptable uses of this paragraph:

UNACCEPTABLE: From 1975-1983 the Phillies were among the most formidable teams in baseball. (There are six words in succession taken directly from the original, including one “significant” word [“formidable”], and the whole phrasing follows the original too closely.)

ACCEPTABLE: Frederick Ivor-Campbell points out in Total Baseball (first edition, 1989) that from 1975 through 1983 the Phillies “were one of the most formidable teams in baseball.”

ACCEPTABLE: Frederick Ivor-Campbell points out in Total Baseball (first edition, 1989) that the 1975-1983 Phillies were among baseball’s “most formidable” teams.

ACCEPTABLE: Frederick Ivor-Campbell points out in Total Baseball (first edition, 1989) that the 1975-1983 Phillies were among baseball’s greatest teams.

UNACCEPTABLE: The Phillies needed 32 years to win their first pennant, and 97 years to win their first World Series. (While the information here doesn’t “belong” to the original author — anyone could have calculated these figures for him/herself — the writer follows the original author’s pattern of expression too closely, copying the original word-for-word for more than ten words in a row. If you got your information from this passage, you might as well credit the author; if you uncovered the information on your own, you could write it something like this to avoid plagiarism: It was thirty-two years after their founding before the Phillies won their first pennant, and ninety-seven years before they won their first World Series.

Originally codified by Fred Ivor-Campbell, 25 July 2002 revised August, October 2002.

Additional revisions by Rory Costello, February 2019.

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The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on May 6 in New York City. Read our reviews of this year's winning works of fiction, general nonfiction, history, biography, and memoir and autobiography.

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Sarah L. Booth, PhD

Vitamin K status and chronic disease, bioavailability, food composition

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Dr. Sarah Booth is Director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University (HNRCA) and Senior Scientist and Leader of the Vitamin K Team at the HNRCA. The mission of the HNRCA, one of the largest research centers in the world studying nutrition and its relationship to healthy aging and physical activity, is to promote healthy and active aging based on research focused on nutrition and physical activity choices that encourage vitality. It is one of six human nutrition research centers supported by the United States Department of Agriculture. Over its 40 year existence, HNRCA scientists have made significant contributions to U.S. and international nutritional and physical activity recommendations, public policy, and clinical healthcare as it pertains to older adults.

Dr. Booth is an international leader in vitamin K research. Among her many research accomplishments, Dr. Booth discovered a previously undescribed form of vitamin K in the human diet created by the hydrogenation of dietary fats. She developed the methodology for measuring vitamin K forms in a variety of food matrices and her research team continues to generate vitamin K food composition data that are incorporated into national nutrient databases. Her research team has also studied novel roles for vitamin K in calcification disorders and kidney disease.  Her current NIH-funded research investigates the role of vitamins D and K in risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Dr. Booth has received multiple awards in recognition of her research, the most recent being the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) E.V. McCollum Award for a Senior Investigator.

Dr. Booth is a professor in the Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Dr. Booth is also Chair of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Vice President of the American ASN and a member of the FASEB finance committee.  

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U.S. Tightens Rules on Risky Virus Research

A long-awaited new policy broadens the type of regulated viruses, bacteria, fungi and toxins, including those that could threaten crops and livestock.

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By Carl Zimmer and Benjamin Mueller

The White House has unveiled tighter rules for research on potentially dangerous microbes and toxins, in an effort to stave off laboratory accidents that could unleash a pandemic.

The new policy, published Monday evening, arrives after years of deliberations by an expert panel and a charged public debate over whether Covid arose from an animal market or a laboratory in China.

A number of researchers worried that the government had been too lax about lab safety in the past, with some even calling for the creation of an independent agency to make decisions about risky experiments that could allow viruses, bacteria or fungi to spread quickly between people or become more deadly. But others warned against creating restrictive rules that would stifle valuable research without making people safer.

The debate grew sharper during the pandemic, as politicians raised questions about the origin of Covid. Those who suggested it came from a lab raised concerns about studies that tweaked pathogens to make them more dangerous — sometimes known as “gain of function” research.

The new policy, which applies to research funded by the federal government, strengthens the government’s oversight by replacing a short list of dangerous pathogens with broad categories into which more pathogens might fall. The policy pays attention not only to human pathogens, but also those that could threaten crops and livestock. And it provides more details about the kinds of experiments that would draw the attention of government regulators.

The rules will take effect in a year, giving government agencies and departments time to update their guidance to meet the new requirements.

“It’s a big and important step forward,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a longtime proponent of stricter safety regulations. “I think this policy is what any reasonable member of the public would expect is in place in terms of oversight of the world’s most transmissible and lethal organisms.”

Still, the policy does not embrace the most aggressive proposals made by lab safety proponents, such as creating an independent regulatory agency. It also makes exemptions for certain types of research, including disease surveillance and vaccine development. And some parts of the policy are recommendations rather than government-enforced requirements.

“It’s a moderate shift in policy, with a number of more significant signals about how the White House expects the issue to be treated moving forward,” said Nicholas Evans, an ethicist at University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Experts have been waiting for the policy for more than a year. Still, some said they were surprised that it came out at such a politically fraught moment . “I wasn’t expecting anything, especially in an election year,” Dr. Evans said. “I’m pleasantly surprised.”

Under the new policy, scientists who want to carry out experiments will need to run their proposals past their universities or research institutions, which will to determine if the work poses a risk. Potentially dangerous proposals will then be reviewed by government agencies. The most scrutiny will go to experiments that could result in the most dangerous outcomes, such as those tweaking pathogens that could start a pandemic.

In a guidance document , the White House provided examples of research that would be expected to come under such scrutiny. In one case, they envisioned scientists trying to understand the evolutionary steps a pathogen needed to transmit more easily between humans. The researchers might try to produce a transmissible strain to study, for example, by repeatedly infecting human cells in petri dishes, allowing the pathogens to evolve more efficient ways to enter the cells.

Scientists who do not follow the new policy could become ineligible for federal funding for their work. Their entire institution may have its support for life science research cut off as well.

One of the weaknesses of existing policies is that they only apply to funding given out by the federal government. But for years , the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies have struggled with stagnant funding, leading some researchers to turn instead to private sources. In recent years, for example, crypto titans have poured money into pandemic prevention research.

The new policy does not give the government direct regulation of privately funded research. But it does say that research institutions that receive any federal money for life-science research should apply a similar oversight to scientists doing research with support from outside the government.

“This effectively limits them, as the N.I.H. does a lot of work everywhere in the world,” Dr. Evans said.

The new policy takes into account the advances in biotechnology that could lead to new risks. When pathogens become extinct, for example, they can be resurrected by recreating their genomes. Research on extinct pathogens will draw the highest levels of scrutiny.

Dr. Evans also noted that the new rules emphasize the risk that lab research can have on plants and animals. In the 20th century, the United States and Russia both carried out extensive research on crop-destroying pathogens such as wheat-killing fungi as part of their biological weapons programs. “It’s significant as a signal the White House is sending,” Dr. Evans said.

Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard and a longtime critic of the government’s policy, gave the new one a grade of A minus. “I think it’s a lot clearer and more specific in many ways than the old guidance,” he said. But he was disappointed that the government will not provide detailed information to the public about the risky research it evaluates. “The transparency is far from transparent,” he said.

Scientists who have warned of the dangers of impeding useful virus research were also largely optimistic about the new rules.

Gigi Gronvall, a biosafety specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the policy’s success would depend on how federal health officials interpreted it, but applauded the way it recognized the value of research needed during a crisis, such as the current bird flu outbreak .

“I was cautiously optimistic in reading through it,” she said of the policy. “It seems like the orientation is for it to be thoughtfully implemented so it doesn’t have a chilling effect on needed research.”

Anice Lowen, an influenza virologist at Emory University, said the expanded scope of the new policy was “reasonable.” She said, for instance, that the decision not to create an entirely new review body helped to alleviate concerns about how unwieldy the process might become.

Still, she said, ambiguities in the instructions for assessing risks in certain experiments made it difficult to know how different university and health officials would police them.

“I think there will be more reviews carried out, and more research will be slowed down because of it,” she said.

Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column . More about Carl Zimmer

Benjamin Mueller reports on health and medicine. He was previously a U.K. correspondent in London and a police reporter in New York. More about Benjamin Mueller