Überbewertung der eigenen Nation Der Anteil der eigenen Landsleute an naturwissenschaftshistorischen Lexika
Do editors of books on the history of science prefer scientists of their own country in their selection? Restricting ourselves to German, British and French scientists, a comparison of books in these languages shows that each editor takes more than half of the selected scientists from his respective nation and the remainder from the other two nations. The dictionaries of Fritz Krafft (‚Grose Naturwissenschaftler’, 21986) and Ilse Jahn et al.: (‚Geschichte der Biologie. […] Kurzbiographien’, 1982) dedicate about 60% of their articles to German scientists, Trevor Illtyd Williams (‚A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists’, 1969) about 50% to British scientists and Maurice Daumas (‚Histoire de la Science’, 1957; according to the register) about 50% to French scientists.